Looking ahead: Cybersecurity predictions for 2026.

This long-form expert roundup forecasts how AI will reshape the threat landscape in 2026, highlighting risks such as agentic AI becoming privileged insider-like attackers, AI-driven extortion and social engineering (deepfakes and voice cloning), supply-chain and API/OAuth abuse, on-device NPU-enabled malware and local zero-day generation, identity and credential proliferation, and increased targeting of critical infrastructure and SaaS. The report also outlines defensive shifts — AI-SPM, stronger governance, agent observability, identity-first controls, post-quantum planning, and automated prevention — while warning of systemic operational and regulatory challenges.