University of Kwazulu-Natal

Cybersecurity 2026 6 Forecasts And A Blueprint For The Year Ahead Forb

Bonisiwe Shabane
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cybersecurity 2026 6 forecasts and a blueprint for the year ahead forb

Cybersecurity enters a new era in 2026. Criminals abandon encryption for exposure, AI becomes both attacker and defender, regulations raise the bar for security, open-source ecosystems fight back with automation, VPNs give way to zero trust, and AI fluency becomes mandatory. Explore the WatchGuard Threat Lab’s six predictions for the year ahead. In 2026, crypto-ransomware will effectively go extinct, as threat actors abandon encryption and focus on data theft and extortion. Organizations have significantly improved their data backup and restoration capabilities, meaning they’re more likely to recover from a traditional crypto-ransomware attack without having to pay the extortion demands. Instead, cybercriminals simply steal data, threaten to leak it, and even report victims to regulators or insurance companies to increase pressure.

Encryption no longer pays off; the real leverage will now come from exposure. If the surge of attacks against open-source package repositories like NPM and PyPI has taught security teams anything, it’s that open source is under siege. It’s a losing battle, and traditional security controls, such as tighter authentication and shorter token lifetimes, can’t keep up. In 2026, open-source package repositories will adopt automated, AI-driven defenses to fight back against a growing wave of supply chain attacks. To keep up with this significant and persistent threat, these repositories will become early adopters of automated SOC-style systems for their own applications, enabling them to detect and respond to attacks in real time. In 2026, the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) will finally become the market force that drives adoption of secure-by-design principles.

With the first phase going into effect next September, software manufacturers selling into the EU must report actively exploited vulnerabilities and security incidents within 24 hours, the most aggressive reporting requirement yet. While the initial rollout will likely be chaotic as companies scramble to comply and more of their weaknesses are exposed, it will ultimately create a lasting incentive to build security into products from the... At the same time, overlapping global regulations will reveal competing frameworks and contradictions, forcing organizations to navigate an increasingly complex web of compliance. In 2025, WatchGuard predicted that multi-modal AI tools would be able to carry out every aspect of the attackers’ cyber kill chain, which proved to be true. 2026 will mark the year AI stops just assisting cybercriminals and starts attacking on its own. From reconnaissance and vulnerability scanning to lateral movement and exfiltration, these autonomous systems can orchestrate an entire breach at machine speed.

Enterprises Will Start Treating AI Systems as Insider Threats. Josh Taylor, Lead Security Analyst, Fortra As agents gain system-level permissions to act across email, file storage, and identity platforms, companies will need to monitor machine behavior for privilege misuse, data leakage, etc. The shift happens when organizations realize their AI assistants have broader access than most employees and operate outside traditional user behavior analytics. The first time an AI agent gets compromised through prompt injection or a supply chain attack and starts quietly exfiltrating customer data under the guise of “helping users,” organizations will realize they built privileged... John Wilson, Senior Fellow, Threat Research, Fortra

Our cyber security products span from our next gen SIEM used in the most secure government and critical infrastructure environments, to automated cyber risk reporting applications for commercial and government organisations of all sizes. Any organisation can be the target of cyber attackers or find itself exposed through the actions of malicious insiders. Leverage our industry specific cyber security capabilities to help reduce risk. Access our industry-leading resources to improve your cyber resilience Since 1999, Huntsman Security has been on the cutting-edge of cyber security software development, serving some of the most sensitive and secure intelligence, defence and criminal justice environments in the world. Each year, as Huntsman Security sets out to forecast what lies ahead, we are reminded of just how difficult it is to predict the course of technology, cyber security, and the world at large.

The pace of change is relentless, and the stakes for organisations continue to rise. Executive leadership hub - What’s important to the C-suite? Six ways to prepare for a more secure future Principal, Deputy Platform Leader, Cyber, Data, and Tech Risk, PwC US In 2025, critical infrastructure organizations around the world have faced a wave of cyber threats driven by espionage- or sabotage-motivated threat actors, financially motivated ransomware groups, and ideologically driven hacktivists—and it’s only getting more... Our threat intelligence team at PwC expects 2026 to be defined by stealthier, persistent, and identity-centric cyber operations, often connected to real-world geopolitical and ideological conflicts.

Adversaries increasingly “log in” rather than “break in,” meaning they exploit legitimate accounts and authentication processes to gain access. Advances in AI and increasingly accessible attack tools are lowering the bar for threat actors to conduct covert, widespread campaigns. Cyber leaders understand that managing risk isn’t enough anymore, that they should build security from the ground up. Your Technology. Our Connections.Together, we win! For much of its history, corporate automation adoption has been a slow, incremental process.

As we approach 2026, however, that steady march is poised to become a transformative leap. 2026 will mark the inflection point where the global economy transitions from "AI-assisted" to "AI-native.” We won't just adopt new tools, we’ll build a new economic reality: The AI Economy. Autonomous AI agents, entities with the ability to reason, act and remember, will define this new era. We’ll delegate key tasks to these agents, from triaging alerts in the security operations center (SOC) to building financial models for corporate strategy. For leaders, a central question in 2026 will be how to govern and secure a new, multihybrid workforce where machines and agents already outnumber human employees by an 82 to 1 ratio.1 We've already... Now, we confront the new, unsecured front door in every employee’s browser.

These shifts in productivity also unleash a new class of risk. Insider threats can take the form of a rogue AI agent, capable of goal hijacking, tool misuse and privilege escalation at speeds that defy human intervention. At the same time, a silent, existential clock is ticking: The quantum timeline is accelerating, threatening to retroactively render our data insecure. This new economy demands a new playbook. Reactive security is a losing strategy. To win, security must evolve from a back-line defense into a proactive, offensive force.

You bought the platform hoping it would cover everything. Eighteen months later, you’re still waiting for that feature update while your developers ship AI-generated code faster than your security tools can detect it. In 2025, the speed of AI development has outpaced vendor roadmaps while CFOs are targeting the waste in your security stack and regulators want operational proof instead of policy documents. The 2026 predictions below came from conversations across our team at Sola, and feedback we’ve been getting from users, colleagues, and members of the cybersecurity community. Each person calls out the shift they see coming based on what security teams are dealing with right now. Six cybersecurity predictions for 2026, six different perspectives on why the operating model is changing from buying rigid platforms to building flexible workflows that adapt instantly.

CISOs are sitting on millions of dollars in unused licenses. The dirty secret of enterprise security is shelf-ware, those tools you bought two years ago that now collect dust in your tech stack. Industry benchmarks show that roughly half of all SaaS licenses go unused, costing the average organization over $135,000 annually in completely dead spend. For larger enterprises, that number jumps into the millions. Your CFO already knows about the problem. Finance teams report that 44% of organizations now face direct pressure to cut SaaS spending.

The bloated stack era is ending because renewal committees won’t tolerate carrying that much waste anymore.

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