Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2026. Read them in this 18th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Liora Ziv, Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst, CyberProof
Throughout 2025, we witnessed a significant evolution in the cyber threat landscape, characterized by the emergence of sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) powered ransomware groups, intensified targeting of critical infrastructure, and the continued blurring of lines between nation-state actors, cybercriminals and hacktivists. Most importantly, we saw just how quickly the cyber ecosystem is changing. It’s important to take a look back on the past year in cybersecurity and evaluate what is on the horizon for 2026. Here are my predictions:
Internal security is just as important as external security
Going into 2026, the biggest threat won’t be traditional phishing at all – it will be insider-style social engineering. It will become just as critical. The industry has been laser-focused on email security, yet the most effective intrusions in 2025 came from attackers impersonating IT, human resources or internal support teams, exploiting trust rather than technology. With vishing (voice cloning) and spoofed internal messaging now easy to create, these techniques have become extremely effective. In 2026, treating internal identity verification as a security control will be just as important as filtering what comes from the outside.
AI will be leveraged throughout an entire malicious campaign
Throughout 2025, most AI use by threat actors focused on making more of what they already do well: producing multilingual phishing campaigns, crafting personalized lures, and producing simple malware variants. The shift we expect in 2026 is toward AI assisting with entire campaigns. That includes automated victim profiling, adaptable ransomware negotiations in real time, and on-demand malware variants tailored to the victim environment. If this trend continues, mid-tier groups will gain capabilities that previously required significantly more resources or expertise, narrowing the gap between top-tier and opportunistic actors.
Compliance as the new attack surface
In 2026, we expect extortion groups to increasingly use regulatory exposure as a deliberate form of leverage. After major consumer-facing breaches and stricter reporting rules that followed, attackers have realised that the threat of investigations, fines, and public scrutiny can be more damaging to organisations than the breaches themselves. Ransom notes already reference General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), UK reporting timelines, and sector-specific disclosure rules, with some groups threatening to notify regulators directly or leak small data samples to force mandatory reporting. This turns compliance obligations into an attack surface: the pressure doesn’t come only from encrypted systems or stolen data, but also from the legal and reputational consequences adversaries now know how to exploit.
The continued rise of threat-actor ecosystems
One of the most significant trends expected next year is the continued rise of collaborative threat-actor ecosystems, where separate groups operate more like alliances than isolated crews. We have already seen this shift emerge through hybrid or shared-infrastructure collectives such as Scattered Spider-Lapsus$ and ShineyHunters collective, and more recently the LockBit-DragonForce-Qilin cooperation, where tooling, access, and operational support flow between groups with aligned financial motives. This model allows actors to scale faster, share successful intrusion techniques, and recover quickly after law-enforcement pressure. In 2026, we are likely to see more fluid partnerships, temporary joint operations, and resource-sharing networks, blurring the lines between distinct ransomware brands and enabling high-impact attacks that resemble coordinated campaigns rather than isolated incidents.
Conclusion
As threat actors continue to evolve, organizations will need to adapt quickly to new attacker techniques. As defenders, staying ahead will require more than just better tools, it will take faster detection, better internal coordination, and closer cooperation between public and private sectors. Now more than ever, it is crucial to prioritize a threat-led defense strategy and industry collaboration to better prepare for the evolving threat landscape of 2026 and beyond.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Liora Ziv is a cyber threat intelligence analyst who combines a strategic view of global cyber trends with the analysis of modern threat-actor behavior. With a background in international relations and fluency in multiple languages, she brings a global, contextual lens to her work, helping organizations better understand the forces shaping today’s cyber landscape.
