Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2026. Read them in this 18th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Max Gannon, Intelligence Manager, Cofense
Phishing has never stood still, and in 2026, it won’t just evolve; it will mutate beyond the reach of traditional perimeter defenses. Attackers are using AI not just to craft better emails, but to exploit the very gaps defensive AI and Secure Email Gateways (SEGs) create. The message for security leaders is clear: automation alone is no longer enough. In the coming year, the only defense that will matter is one rooted in human context, user vigilance, and collective intelligence.
Context Becomes the Only Defense Against Modern Phishing
Traditional email security controls that rely on scanning embedded URLs will increasingly fall short. Threat actors are escalating their use of redirection tactics such as legitimate open redirects, link shorteners, and trusted platforms like Microsoft Forms and Google Forms to obscure malicious destinations. These techniques, combined with convincing brand impersonation and AI-generated phishing lures, routinely bypass both traditional SEGs and AI-based filters. Worse, the network traffic and file signatures involved often are legitimate, creating a dangerous blind spot for automated defenses.
As seen in the recent in Remote Access Tool based malware campaigns, even network defenders often dismiss these signs as legitimate IT activity because, in many cases, it technically is. This highlights how context, not content, makes the difference. Attackers exploit familiarity and blend into the noise. That is why context-aware threat detection, paired with human intuition, will be essential to detecting and stopping advanced phishing campaigns.
To stay ahead, organizations must shift from static defenses to dynamic, intelligence-driven strategies. That means investing in security awareness training that goes far beyond “don’t click the link.” In 2026, success will not hinge on better scanning. It will depend on empowering users to act as critical sensors in a broader security strategy that leverages the world’s most powerful threat detection network: trained human eyes.
Yesterday’s Bugs Are Becoming Tomorrow’s Breach Headlines
Attackers will increasingly use offensive AI to uncover unpatched variations of known vulnerabilities, focusing on systems where updates only partially resolved the issue. Rather than hunting zero-days, threat actors will repackage older CVEs with slight modifications, exploiting the fact that many organizations assume a fix is final. These attacks are fast, scalable, and stay just ahead of existing detection models.
The same principle is being applied to phishing itself. If one phishing email manages to bypass a filter, offensive AI will rapidly generate dozens of near-identical variants, tweaking formatting, behavior, or structure until a new successful bypass is found. These small changes routinely confuse pattern-based and AI-driven defenses, turning isolated misses into repeated breaches.
The Path Forward: Empowered Humans and Collective Intelligence
Phishing in 2026 is not just a technical problem; it’s a cultural one. The organizations that will thrive are those that integrate human sensors into every layer of their defense. This means developing a security culture that empowers users to recognize and report even the most subtle signs of compromise, including after they’ve engaged with a phishing message.
To counteract threats that evolve in real time, security programs must do the same. This requires feeding user-reported intelligence back into detection workflows, not relying solely on AI signatures or static rulesets. The future of phishing defense is collective, contextual, and human-enabled. Because in a world where every phish looks legitimate, only context, real-time, user-informed, and situationally aware, will keep your organization safe.
That also means cybersecurity training must adapt. Standard awareness modules built on outdated phishing templates are quickly losing relevance. Effective training now needs to reflect real threats that have successfully bypassed email security controls. If your users are only learning to spot yesterday’s attacks, they won’t be prepared for tomorrow’s.
