2025, that’s a wrap
As 2026 gets underway, we’ll undoubtedly all be busy dusting off the gym memberships (at least for January), picking out a new hobby (book club anyone?) and making plans for the year ahead. However, before we get swept up in the ‘new year, new me’ mantra, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on 2025, and some of the team’s PR successes along the way.
After all, a lot happened last year: Katy Perry went to space, Labubu’s somehow became popular and, in a twist nobody saw coming, Alan Carr won UK Celebrity Traitors. Geopolitical shocks and cyber crises also made it a defining year for global business, technology and security.
Alongside this increasingly complex news agenda, the media world faced several challenges. Newsrooms got smaller, budgets tighter and experienced reporters have been asked to cover more ground than ever before. This has forced journalists to prioritise speed, clarity and relevance.
In this landscape, the need for timely, credible and genuinely thoughtful expert perspectives has never been greater. When major stories break, journalists are looking for voices that can cut through the noise, explaining not just what has happened, but why it matters and what comes next.
Throughout 2025, our clients have played that role across some of the year’s biggest moments. Let’s take a look back at where they shaped the conversation:
1. Tarrifs: The new trade reality
The year with renewed global uncertainty as President Trump’s proposed tariffs sent shockwaves through European busines and supply chains. Industry leaders warned that the measures could push EU companies to breaking point, particularly in manufacturing, energy and technology.
Rob Shaw, GM EMEA at Fluent Commerce spoke with CPO Strategy about how rising costs, regulatory divergence and political unpredictability were already forcing businesses to rethink cross-border strategy, warning of the consumer impact. This set the tone for 2025: Geopolitics once again dictating commercial reality.
2. Davos: AI-sustainability tension
In January, the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting brought together top decision-makers from government, business and civil society to address major global issues and priorities for the year ahead. This year’s Davos saw optimism arount AI’s economic potential collided with concern over its environmental cost.
Ahead of the event, AVEVA’s Chief Sustainability Officer Lisa Wee spoke to Reuters’ Angeli Mehta about what the UK government’s AI investment meant for net zero ambitions. Following up with her after the event, her message was clear: The discourse around sustainability may have changed for some, but the fundamentals of what is happening and the imperative of continuing to make progress on clinate are unchanged.
3. Retail, beware: Scattered Spider’s here
Fast forward to Easter weekend and a major cyber incident at Marks & Spencer laid bare just how quickly a security breach can spiral into an operational, legal and reputational crisis. As attackers linked to the Scattered Spider group targeted UK retailers, the story rapidly dominated both national headlines and the tech press.
Commvault emerged as a key expert voice throughout the coverage. Senior director Jason Gerrard spoke to a number of journalists about how some organisations don’t reach business-as-usual for more than six months after an attack, explaining the importance of a Minimum Viable Cybersecurity (MVC) approach. He featured across outlets including The Express, The Mirror and Computer Weekly.
Unfortunately, the attacks didn’t stop with M&S. Around the May bank holiday, retailers Co-op and Harrods were the next UK retail victims. Shobhit Guatum, Senior Solutions Architect EMEA at HackerOne, believes the timing was no accident. He spoke to City A.M., SC Magazine and the Raconteur about how threat actors were seizing the moment during bank holidays, the tactics that these groups use, and why this should be a timely reminder for other retailers to redouble their focus on cyber resilience.
4. Job market: Retention trouble ahead
As 2025 unfolded and businesses across the UK grappled with tight labour markets, research revealed that nearly one in four UK workers were planning to quit their jobs within the year — a clear signal that traditional retention levers were no longer sufficient.
Speaking to Training Journal, Aisling MacNamara, Director of Learning, Enablement and Inclusion at LearnUpon, championed the idea that strategic investment in learning and development can be a powerful retention engine, not just a nice-to-have.
5. Trump’s cyber executive order: digital ID rollback
Mid-year brought another seismic moment for cyber strategy when the U.S. administration issued a high-profile cybersecurity executive order which scrapped Biden-era digital identity initiatives. This reshaped the US approach to online identity, authentication and trust.
Aaron Sandeen, CEO and Co-Founder of Securin, spoke to Politico about the broader implications for enterprise resilience. He argued that robust identity frameworks and proactive vulnerability intelligence must remain core to defensive strategies in a landscape where threat actors continue to exploit gaps in authentication and verification.
6. Tech investment: UK – US trade deal
As political ties warmed, talk of a renewed UK–US tech deal gathered momentum. In September, it was confirmed that the US would invest £150 billion into the UK, creating 7,600 jobs across the country. However, business leaders cautioned that welcomed promises must translate into tangible action.
Claire Hu Weber, Vice President of International Markets at Fluke Corporation, spoke to Alannah Francis at I Paper about why while big investments are positive, the real test is whether they translate into lasting capability on the ground. She explained why the investment must be paired with practical support for apprenticeships, standards, and hands-on technology.
7. AI deepfakes: Cybercrime caution
By early autumn, AI-enabled cybercrime dominated headlines. Reports emerged of North Korea-linked hackers using generative AI to forge deepfake military IDs as part of sophisticated spear-phishing attacks.
Sandy Kronenberg, CEO and Founder of Netarx and Clyde Williamson, Senior Product Security Architect at Protegrity spoke to Fox News’ Kurt Knutsson about the ways generative AI has lowered the barrier to entry for sophisticated attacks. They explained how this shift underscores the need for multi-signal verification across voice, video, email and metadata, as well as a security training reset.
8. The Louvre heist: physical security blind spots
A high-profile heist at the Louvre reignited debate around physical security, surveillance and threat detection at major cultural institutions. It took just seven minutes to steal more than $100 million in jewels in an operation so precise it exposed a deeper flaw in how even the most secure institutions protect what matters most.
In SecurityInformed, Jennifer Hackenburg, Director of Product Marketing at Luminys explored how legacy systems, siloed data and slow response times continue to leave even world-famous landmarks vulnerable.
9. Government shutdown: Escalating cyber risk
As the longest U.S. government shutdown in decades unfolded, cybersecurity professionals also warned that the political impasse was doing more than stalling budgets, it was creating tangible vulnerabilities across the digital landscape.
Speaking to Cassandre Coyer at Bloomberg Law, Ilona Cohen, Chief Legal Officer at HackerOne and former general counsel at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, emphasised how reduced staffing at agencies like CISA slowed the flow of critical threat information and undercut a layer of coordinated defense that organisations once relied on.
2026, let’s go!
If 2025 has shown us anything, it’s that technology, security and policy are no longer separate conversations. The organisations shaping the narrative are those that can provide genuine clarity and opinion, moving the stories along.
At TouchdownPR, we’re proud to help our clients be part of that conversation. If you’re looking to collaborate with an award-winning PR agency that stays ahead of the curve, please contact Touchdown PR here.
