Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2026. Read them in this 18th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Ron Peled, Co-Founder and COO of Sola Security
For years, cybersecurity teams have tried to solve new problems and challenges by adding more tools, dashboards, licenses and expanding budgets. Instead of improving coverage, this has created bloated stacks, slower response times, and teams overwhelmed just from managing tools rather than focusing on risk.
In 2026, this model is going to dramatically change.
Attackers are exploiting new vulnerabilities at machine speed, developers are shipping AI-generated code faster than security teams can review or monitor it, regulators are asking for operational proof rather than just documents, and CFOs are questioning the need to fund unused tools.
The outcome is a shift toward flexible, adaptive workflows that can evolve as quickly as the environment they protect.
Cost Pressure Exposes the “Comprehensive Security” Myth
Security stacks have accumulated significant waste. Many organizations still carry bundled tools that were purchased years ago and promised to cover everything, but aren’t significantly utilized today.
A dramatic shift is arriving in 2026: users, (and not only those who are tech-savvy) now expect a generative AI experience to be the default. They demand solutions that proactively simplify workflows, eliminate friction, and provide instant answers to their questions almost instantly. This changes everything from user experience to outcome and pricing.
This pressure accelerates an unbundling trend already underway. Instead of buying heavy lifting platforms that promise to “cover everything someday,” teams are prioritizing systems that deliver quick, provable value. Flexibility beats theoretical completeness when budgets tighten and threats evolve weekly.
Small Security Teams Gain Leverage Through AI
The security skills gap continues to widen, with organizations relying on small teams to manage cloud infrastructure, identity, SaaS, detection, and incident response all at the same time.
AI shifts that balance. Natural-language interfaces, no-code workflows, and AI-assisted analytics reduce the need for specialized tool expertise. Tasks once requiring deep skills or consultants can now be done in minutes. AI doesn’t replace expertise, it refocuses it. It reduces the time spent on correlation, enrichment, and initial investigation, allowing human effort to focus on prioritization, judgment, and decision-making. In addition, when used in a contextual and practical way, native AI solutions dramatically upgrade each user’s skills and capabilities almost effortlessly.
Compliance Becomes Executable, or Irrelevant
Governance frameworks that only exist on paper are no longer enough. Auditors require a higher level of evidence and proof that the controls are actually implemented correctly, and not merely exist. Regulations like the EU AI Act and DORA demand actual operational proof.
Policies must be executable -embedded into workflows via automated access checks, ongoing data-use monitoring, and built-in audit records. Teams that operationalize governance remain compliant. Those that don’t will find that good intentions no longer qualify as evidence.
Intelligence Will Gradually Replace Tool Assembly
Security stacks became fragmented because earlier technical limitations forced risk to be segmented into various sub-categories. However, with the simplification introduced by AI, security teams can achieve much more across multiple domains rather than through the traditional siloed approach
The emerging model is built on shared data foundations and AI agents that reason across systems. Instead of navigating siloed dashboards, teams interact with agents that already understand organizational context.
In this model, security analysis shifts from asking what just happened to assessing what is most likely to go wrong next. This move from reactive querying to continuous reasoning defines the new operating model that is likely to grow in 2026 and beyond.
Real-Time Reasoning Becomes Mandatory
Traditional security analytics work the same way they have for years – logs are collected, stored, and analyzed later. But when attackers exploit vulnerabilities within hours, hindsight analytics are too slow.
By the time security teams get answers, the context has already changed and the window of opportunity to act has often passed. Searching through large volumes of raw data after the fact is too slow to support meaningful response.
In 2026, security analytics continue shifting left. Instead of storing everything first and reasoning later, data is normalized and evaluated in near real-time. This allows teams to ask direct questions and get immediate answers, rather than waiting for long-running queries to complete.
AI-generated Code Becomes a Major Blind Spot
AI coding assistants and “vibe-coding” tools let developers ship code quickly, but often without sufficient security reviewing the underlying logic. Research shows that nearly half of AI-generated code contains exploitable vulnerabilities, and use of these tools is already widespread.
Security teams can’t block AI coding, but they must adapt detection models to account for AI-specific risks. Without this visibility, AI-generated code could become one of the largest sources of untracked vulnerabilities in 2026.
The Bottom Line
Winning teams in 2026 won’t have the most tools or the biggest budgets. They’ll move faster, eliminate tool waste, operationalize governance, and use AI to amplify, rather than replace, human decision-making.
The operating model is changing. The teams that will succeed don’t have to be the ones with the biggest budgets. They’ll be the teams who stop carrying waste, adapt quickly, and embrace new approaches that align with emerging enabling capabilities and the introduction of tailor-made solutions.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ron Peled is Co-Founder and COO of Sola Security. With 20+ years in cyber security, Ron brought his expertise to Sola to help drive innovation and disruptive approaches to security. Previously, Ron was the founder & CEO of ProtectOps, a strategic security and business enablement consulting firm for startups and hyper growth companies. In addition, Ron was the Global CISO of LivePerson Inc and an advisory board member in several startups.
