Cybersecurity is running faster than ever but not necessarily moving forward. In 2026, we’re in for what Lewis Carroll called a Red Queen race – running full speed just to stay in place. AI, automation, and global instability are accelerating threats and innovation in equal measure. In this blog, I’m exploring these changes, as I’ve been doing for many years, to help business leaders, CISOs, and cyber-risk owners prepare for what’s next.
Cybersecurity is in a Red Queen’s Race
Threat Actors: Organised, Automated, and AI-Driven
Hackers in 2026 are more organised, automated, and globally networked than ever before. The old boundaries between nation-state, cybercriminal, and hacktivist operations have blurred into a seamless ecosystem of shared tools, data, and AI-powered infrastructure. Their objectives are simple: to control your mind or your money. Today, hackers are no longer only using AI. They’re building fully autonomous, adaptive malware that rewrites its code and changes tactics on the fly, evading static and signature-based defences.
Nation-State Actors and AI Weaponization
State-backed campaigns continue to escalate, with an increasing emphasis on long-term infiltration and AI-enabled precision attacks. A concerning development is North Korea’s launch of “Research 227,” a government-backed facility dedicated to advancing AI-powered offensive capabilities. Its mission is to build autonomous hacking systems that exploit global vulnerabilities faster than human operators. This signals a new stage of cyber conflict where nations compete for algorithmic superiority, marking the beginning of a digital arms race measured not just in code, but in computation.
The New Speed of Exploitation
Speed has become the defining factor of cyber warfare. The time between a vulnerability disclosure and its exploitation has shrunk from weeks to minutes. Today, AI scans the Internet in seconds, generates exploits in minutes, and autonomously deploys payloads -from ransomware to infostealer campaigns – at scale.
The gap between vulnerability disclosure and exploitation is virtually gone, especially for small businesses that lack adaptive controls. Threat intelligence teams report that new CVEs can be weaponized within 15 minutes of publication, with exploit kits sold for as little as $1 on dark-web markets. This industrialisation of exploitation means cybercrime has become fully commoditised, and the barrier to entry has all but disappeared. The traditional “grace period” between disclosure and exploitation no longer exists. In 2026, organisations must assume new CVEs are exploitable almost instantly, and ensure near real-time vulnerability management.
Top Cyberattacks in 2026
If 2025 was the year AI transformed the corporate world, 2026 is the year it transforms the cyber battlefield. The story isn’t about new attack classes but about old tactics being supercharged by automation, AI, and autonomy.
Autonomous Malware and AI-Supercharged Social Engineering & Deepfakes
Autonomous, self-learning malware agents are now mainstream – persistently adapting their behaviour to evade detection, not just relying on known exploits. Meanwhile, social engineering remains a reliable entry point. AI-driven phishing campaigns are now roughly three times more effective than traditional ones. Hackers use GenAI to mimic writing styles, auto-translate phishing at scale, and generate convincing pretexts. Deepfakes are now a firm part of the enterprise threat model, exemplified by the $25 million deepfake CFO scam against Arup in 2024. Expect more multi-channel deepfake attacks and real-time impersonations in 2026.
Prompt Injection, Data Poisoning, and Ransomware & Extortion 3.0
As AI systems become integral to business, prompt injection and data poisoning attacks are on the rise, with adversaries targeting the algorithms themselves—manipulating models, leaking data, or triggering unauthorised actions. Ransomware remains the profit engine of cybercrime, driving more than half of all cyberattacks. Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 data from early 2025 shows ransomware leak sites are busier than ever, with manufacturing and retail being the most targeted industries. Tactics are shifting toward triple extortion (encrypt, steal, and threaten partners) and operational extortion, timing attacks for maximum disruption.
Infostealers, Access Brokers & The Browser Battleground
As more work shifts to the browser, attacks on extensions, session tokens, and embedded credentials are surging. Adversary-in-the-Middle (AiTM) attacks, combining phishing and session hijacking, are bypassing MFA entirely. Infostealers are proliferating; over 25% of all detected malware now targets browsers, harvesting credentials sold to access brokers and ransomware groups. Basic hygiene like password managers and phishing resistant MFA is more critical than ever.
Identity Abuse, Supply-Chain, Cloud & AI-Stack Attacks
In 2026, hackers “log in” more than they “break in.” Cloud identity abuse, phishing for device codes, and attacks on vendor accounts dominate, sometimes blinding defenders by targeting security tools themselves. Supply chain attacks are increasing, often exploiting privileged vendor identities or inserting malicious code into trusted software components. The rise of prompt-injection and AI-app exploitation means the supply chain now includes not just code and vendors, but AI services too.
Blindspots and Weaknesses
Shadow AI: The New Shadow IT
The fastest-growing blindspot is shadow AI: employees using unapproved AI tools with sensitive data. Microsoft found that 71% of UK employees have used unapproved AI tools at work. Tool sprawl and lagging governance mean sensitive data ends up in consumer LLMs, and security teams only find out after an incident. Shadow AI is now a core data protection and cyber-resilience problem. Expect this to grow during 2026.
People vs. Policy and the Human Factor
In 2026, the human factor becomes an even more pivotal part of cybersecurity, not because people suddenly become more negligent, but because the conditions around them become more complex. With 69% of employees admitting to bypassing cybersecurity guidance and 74% willing to do so if it helps them meet business goals, the real issue isn’t awareness -it’s workflow reality. As AI-driven attacks become more persuasive, personalised, and psychologically manipulative, employees face an environment where deepfake impersonations, real-time voice cloning, and hyper-targeted phishing blur the line between legitimate communication and deception. At the same time, fatigue, digital overload, hybrid working, and the rise of shadow AI tools amplify risk, making it easier than ever for mistakes to occur. When security controls add friction, users circumvent them – not out of malice, but as a survival mechanism to get their jobs done.
As a result, 2026 will usher in a major shift toward human risk management as a discipline. Organisations will adopt behavioural analytics, real-time “human risk scores,” and friction-to-flow optimisation, treating culture, fatigue, and trust as measurable security variables. Security training will shift from generic, annual tasks to role-based micro-interventions triggered by behaviour and context. Boards will require dashboards showing human risk exposure, not just technical vulnerabilities, while CISOs redefine resilience to include human sustainability: reduction of burnout, psychological safety, and alignment between controls and actual work. In the Red Queen’s race of 2026, where AI accelerates both threat and defence, the organisations that succeed won’t just harden their systems; they’ll empower their people.
CISO Perceptions: The Growing Reality Gap
A significant blindspot is the perception gap between leaders and frontline teams. CISOs often believe they have deep visibility, while operational teams see the gaps. In 2026, this divide will widen. As organisations adopt more AI systems, hybrid cloud environments, machine identities, and interconnected OT/IoT assets, the attack surface will outpace most visibility tools. CISOs will continue to trust dashboard-driven insights, while frontline teams, overloaded by alerts, operational fatigue, and AI-accelerated threats, will recognise gaps leadership may not fully grasp. Without deliberate alignment, this disparity will deepen, magnifying blindspots and increasing the likelihood of undetected risks.
The Evolution of Defence: Behavioural and Anticipatory Models
The rise of autonomous, adaptive malware is forcing a shift in defensive strategies. Traditional signature-based solutions no longer suffice. Organisations are moving towards behavioural and anticipatory defence – systems that interpret intent and context, not just known indicators. Privileged Access Management (PAM) is expanding to cover both human and machine identities, while behavioural baselining and automated anomaly response are becoming standard to catch the unknown and the unexpected.
In 2026, this evolution will accelerate. Defensive systems will increasingly rely on continuous behavioural analytics, identity intent modelling, and autonomous response mechanisms capable of isolating assets in seconds. Expect a surge in “anticipatory defence” technologies – AI systems that forecast likely attack paths before exploitation occurs, rather than reacting after the fact.
Machine identity governance will mature rapidly as organisations realise that unmanaged service accounts, machine identities, and AI agents are now among their largest blindspots. And AI agents in particular represent a new and largely ungoverned layer of risk. These autonomous systems can access data, trigger workflows, move money, make decisions, and interact with other tools — often with privileges that exceed those of human users. Once compromised, an AI agent can exfiltrate data, execute transactions, modify systems, or propagate attacks at machine speed. Because most organisations cannot yet monitor agent behaviour, constrain their permissions, or detect when an agent has been manipulated, AI agents have quietly become a new category of privileged identity – and one of the fastest-growing attack surfaces of 2026.
At the same time, defenders will begin red-teaming their own AI models to uncover bias, drift, and exploitability, treating AI as both a defensive asset and an attack surface.
In short, 2026 will be the year defence shifts from detection to prediction – where staying ahead depends on understanding behaviour, not just blocking known threats.
Modern Cyber Approaches
To keep up, 2026 demands a shift from static defense to continuous resilience and proactive threat anticipation.
Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)
Gartner highlights CTEM as the cornerstone of modern security. Always-on visibility across identities, endpoints, cloud workloads, and AI systems is now imperative. Real-time mapping of exposures – not just after-the-fact audits – is the new normal.
AI-Assisted Defence
AI-driven SOCs are now necessity. They correlate telemetry, automate triage, and accelerate detection, but must be continually red-teamed to guard against manipulation or prompt injection. The strongest defence is a hybrid: machine speed, human intuition.
Zero Trust Everywhere
The next wave of Zero Trust extends beyond users to devices, data flows, and automation. With attackers abusing identity more than endpoints, unified Identity and Access Management is now a business necessity.
Preparing for the Post-Quantum World
Quantum computing is no longer a theoretical risk. Transitioning to post-quantum cryptography is urgent for any business wanting to avoid future ‘decrypt-later’ crises, and in 2026, you’ll see more businesses ready for this.
Regulations and Guidance
Regulation in 2026 is catching up to technology. By mid-2026, Gartner projects that over 80% of global enterprises will be subject to some form of AI governance or cybersecurity mandate.
- United States: A complex environment combines deregulation with a push for AI assurance guidance from CISA and NIST. The state-by-state privacy law patchwork continues to expand.
- Europe: 2026 is the year of consequence-driven compliance. The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) and the NIS2 Directive are being enforced aggressively, with the EU AI Act beginning its staged rollout.
- Global Trends: Across Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa, nations are modernizing privacy laws, focusing on data sovereignty and harmonizing regulations. The universal principle is that AI must be explainable, traceable, and governable.
The State of Cyber Insurance
Cyber insurance is a strategic necessity, but it’s becoming more expensive and conditional. Insurers now scrutinize AI governance, with premiums rising for organizations that lack demonstrable frameworks. After catastrophic ransomware losses, underwriters are demanding proof of real-time monitoring, immutable backups, and tested incident response plans. The personal risk for CISOs has also grown, leading to a rise in CISO-specific liability insurance.
The Evolving Cybersecurity Workforce
The cybersecurity workforce is being reshaped by automation and AI. The global workforce gap is estimated to be 5.5 million, but demand has shifted toward roles blending AI governance, ethics, and security risk management. The CISO role has transformed from an operational guardian to a business-level governor of digital trust. However, burnout remains a systemic threat, with 76% of professionals reporting it either constantly, frequently, or occasionally this year. Progressive organizations are now reframing human resilience as part of their cyber resilience strategy.
Growth Markets in Cybersecurity
Global spending on cybersecurity is projected to exceed $240 billion by the end of 2026. Growth is clustering around key frontiers:
- AI Security and Assurance: The race is on to prove AI can be trusted.
- Cloud Resilience and Data Recovery: Resilience is the new uptime.
- IoT, OT, and Edge Security: Securing critical infrastructure is a national priority.
- Quantum and Cryptographic Transition: Preparing for the post-quantum era is now critical.
- Security Services and Managed Detection: The skills shortage is driving explosive growth in MDR and XDR.
The Road Ahead: Continuous Readiness
Cybersecurity in 2026 isn’t just about defence; it’s about anticipating change. We are in a Red Queen’s race, where autonomous systems accelerate both risk and response. Organisations that thrive will treat resilience as a philosophy, not just a process – combining integrity, redundancy, and adaptability through layered controls, immutable logs, and rapid recovery.
Above all, the human edge remains irreplaceable. As the field shifts from awareness without action to proactive resilience, investing in human risk management, board-level accountability, and fast recovery planning will separate those who merely endure from those who truly progress.
As we move through 2026, one truth endures: cybersecurity is no longer about staying safe. It’s about staying ready – ready to respond, ready to recover, and ready to lead.
Now I Want to Hear from You
Agree or disagree with my predictions for cybersecurity in 2026? Join in the conversation, and let me know over on LinkedIn what you think is likely to happen or what I might have missed.
