Cloudflare, released its Q3 2025 Global Internet Trends & Insights Report, highlighting significant developments in global and regional Internet activity. The report provides a comprehensive view of traffic growth, cybersecurity trends, and the evolving threat landscape across key markets — including a detailed look at the Middle East, where both the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) continued to experience strong digital activity and heightened focus on security defenses.
Q3 2025 Global Numbers:
- Cloudflare handled an average of 6 trillion daily requests globally, which represents a 38% increase year-over-year, and a 3% increase quarter-over-quarter. About 2% of all requests were blocked as potential cyber attacks.
- Cloudflare blocked an average of 102 billion cyber threats each day, a 38% year-over-year decrease, and a 46% drop quarter-over-quarter (note: we typically see a drop in mitigations during the second and third quarter each year).
- In LATAM Cloudflare blocked an average 6 billion cyber threats everyday, a 64% year-over-year decrease, and 69% quarter-over-quarter decrease.
- In EMEA Cloudflare blocked an average of 30 billion cyber threats everyday, a 48% year-over-year decrease, and 53% quarter-over-quarter decrease.
- In North America Cloudflare blocked an average of 21 billion cyber threats everyday, a 37% year-over-year decrease, and 50% quarter-over-quarter decrease.
- In APJC Cloudflare blocked an average of 40.2 billion cyber threats everyday, a 21% year-over-year decrease, and 30% quarter-over-quarter decrease.
- Year-to-date, Cloudflare has blocked an average of about 180 billion threats each day, which represents just over a 1% year-over-year increase.
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) – Regional Internet Trends Snapshot
Internet Traffic & Spikes:
- Overall Traffic Increase / Decrease:
- The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) saw a 9% increase in Internet traffic in Q3 2025, compared with Q2 2025.
- Mitigated traffic originating in KSA increased 129% QoQ.
- Daily Request Traffic:
- In Q3 2025, Cloudflare served an average of 47 billion daily content requests to KSA.
- Of those daily requests, an average of 1.2 billion (3%) were blocked as cyber attacks each day – a 129% increase QoQ.
DDoS Attacks/ Online Attacks:
- Cyber Threats Blocked Per Day
- Cloudflare blocked an average of 137 million cyber threats per day targeting KSA, a 53% decrease QoQ.
- Top Targeted Verticals:
- Consumer Goods
- Internet
- Information Technology and Services
- Media Production
- Airlines/Aviation
- Main Defenses Against Application Layer Attacks:
- WAF rules (84%)
- Looking at WAF rules, the most commonly used mitigation categories included HTTP Anomaly (20%), XSS (11%), and Directory Traversal (9%).
- DDoS Mitigations (12%)
- WAF rules (84%)
United Arab Emirates (UAE) – Regional Internet Trends Snapshot
Internet Traffic & Spikes:
- Overall Traffic Increase / Decrease:
- The UAE saw a 5% increase in Internet traffic in Q3 2025, compared with Q2 2025.
- Mitigated traffic originating in the UAE increased 6% QoQ.
- Daily Request Traffic:
- In Q3 2025, Cloudflare served an average of 18.2 billion daily content requests to the UAE.
- Of those daily requests, an average of 832 million (5%) were blocked as cyber attacks each day, primarily classified as DDoS attacks originating in the UAE – a 6% increase QoQ.
DDoS Attacks/ Online Attacks:
- Cyber Threats Blocked Per Day
- Cloudflare blocked an average of 587 million cyber threats per day targeting the UAE, a 46% decrease QoQ, following a 63% increase in Q2
- Top Targeted Verticals:
- Transportation/Trucking/Railroad
- Gaming
- Information Services
- Construction
- Internet
- Main Defenses Against Application Layer Attacks:
- WAF rules (90%)
- Looking at WAF rules, the most commonly used mitigation categories included HTTP Anomaly (29%), XSS (13%), and SQLi (9%).
- DDoS Mitigations (7%)
- WAF rules (90%)
“As the Middle East accelerates toward its vision of a digitally empowered future, the volume and complexity of Internet traffic continue to grow at an unprecedented rate. Cloudflare’s data reflects how the UAE and Saudi Arabia are not only leading in digital adoption but are also investing significantly in cyber resilience. This reinforces the region’s strategic commitment to building a secure, high-performance digital ecosystem that supports innovation, business continuity, and national transformation goals,” said Bashar Bashaireh, AVP Middle East, Türkiye & North Africa, Cloudflare.
