Top Cybersecurity Trend Predictions for 2026+: BeyondTrust Edition

We’re scarcely midway through the 2020s, but without doubt, the decade has left an indelible mark—in the way of seismic technology shifts, attacks reaching new heights of audacity through deepfakes and AI, and world-shaking breaches.

Amidst this turbulent landscape, identity emerged as the single most important factor driving modern defensive strategies. Some key identity-based challenges that now define the modern risk landscape are:

• The Rise of Identity Debt: Unmanaged and / or excessive permissions across the enterprise have created a massive, technical security burden that organizations are struggling to gain control over.

• The Explosion of Privilege Sprawl: The rapid expansion of cloud services, automation, and agentic AI is exponentially increasing the number of non-human identities, creating a dangerous surge in broad, unmanaged privileges.

The 2020s have also proven that the identity layer is the primary target for threat actors, from nation states to bored teenagers. We’ve seen high-stakes identity-layer compromises, sophisticated cloud-targeted nation-state attacks, and other headline-worthy threats, along with an influx of new regulatory frameworks (SEC, NIS2/DORA, EU AI Act, etc.) scrambling to keep up.

Thus, security’s focus has increasingly shifted towards identity-first security, with the realization that every digital identity (human and non-human) has some level of privilege and that access that needs to be managed and protected. Beyond this, we’ve also witnessed world-stopping technological malfunctions that laid bare the fragility of interconnected systems.

With 2025 coming to a close, let's dive into the trends we expect to shape and redefine the cybersecurity landscape through 2026 and well into the next decade.

Cybersecurity Meets Geopolitics and Global Economics

The Internet Gets a Border Tax

Governments around the world will consider implementing a tax or tariff on digital services (including streaming services and software) that are produced, distributed, hosted, and supported outside of their geographic borders within the next year. We have already seen some indications of impacts to movie studios.

Not a day goes by without tariffs hitting the news. While governments negotiate the rates we pay in excess for physical products, we’ve been fortunate to not pay tariffs on digital services and software—yet. However, since the pandemic, this potential revenue stream has been established in several regions, as well as in some U.S. states. Some governments have already made their move, and we believe more will soon impose tariffs on digital services as they push for innovation and product development to occur within their borders.

The enforcement of these tariffs may open the doors for new industries that focus on monitoring consumption-based processes and collect appropriate fees for taxation. This is akin to paying for the amount of data consumed on a mobile device before unlimited plans were available. If you consider how ubiquitous streaming, software, and digital services have become across the globe, it’s only a matter of time before the lack of digital sovereignty translates into taxation.

Neoclouds Rise: Hyperscalers Wobble in the AI Era

The cloud as we know it is about to fragment. In 2026, CIOs will increasingly look to Neocloud providers, tentatively shifting some business from hyperscalers.

In some cases, this will be driven by competitive offerings with GPUaaS for AI workloads. In other cases, the primary factor will be to cultivate a better developer experience that doesn't require a PhD in the hundreds of APIs and services needed to deploy software in hyperscaler environments.

Traditional cloud infrastructure has struggled to efficiently process AI workloads and data-intensive tasks, treating them as bolt-on services. Neocloud has adopted an AI-first, GPU-centric architecture to provide bare-metal performance, transparent pricing, and elasticity alongside simplified deployment.

Make no mistake: hyperscalers will still dominate, but they’ll be forced to simplify, rethink AI architectures, and compete on developer experience, not just scale.

AI Accelerates and Challenges Human Boundaries

Agentic AI Becomes the Ultimate Attack Vector

In the next year, nearly every technology we operate (consumer and enterprise) will be connected to agentic AI. This fusion will create value, while also dramatically expanding the attack surface. In essence, AI will become the new middleware in most organizations.

The adoption rate of Internet of Things (IoT) technology in our homes—from smart cameras to thermostats—and operational technology (OT) in our businesses was measured in days, not the years or decades it took for technologies like electricity, television, radio, and the internet. Following this precedent, agentic AI is expected to dominate our lives in days by 2026. This technology will tout benefits, from booking travel to optimizing the temperature in our homes. While some agentic AI may really help for many use cases, other uses will turn out to be empty promises, or may actually make things worse.

Further, the rush to deploy agentic AI everywhere will lead to a proliferation of attack vectors, breaches, and new security concerns due to excessive privileges, confused deputy problems, and a general lack of guardrails instrumented during typical secure-by-design processes. The speed-to-market push for agentic AI will leave cybersecurity as an afterthought, and will force users to contend with rapid adoption rates and escalating security threats.

Ethical Backlash: The Rise of AI Veganism

In 2026, the AI revolution will meet its first cultural resistance wave. Many organizations will start to encounter pockets of “AI Veganism”, where employees or customers wish to maintain a principled abstention from using artificial intelligence.

This movement will be driven by a combination of ethical concerns over data sourcing, intellectual ownership, algorithmic bias, the devaluing of human creativity, and the environmental costs of AI compute power. It will attempt to challenge the assumption that AI adoption is inevitable.

Some companies will navigate this resistance by offering transparent governance, opt-out mechanisms, and human-first alternatives in their products and workflows. These could include web search engines that incorporate filters to flag or remove content deemed likely to be AI-generated (such as setting your filter to allow results with up to 15% AI-assisted/generated content), or displaying a clear percentage of AI-generated content alongside every SERP result.

As AI becomes embedded in almost everything, respecting AI veganism will become a niche area that some brands align themselves with by fully abstaining from AI. Most brands will not commit to full AI abstinence, but they will have to factor AI use into their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) assessments. This will trigger a wave of AI greenwashing and raise concerns over the technology’s true environmental costs.

In cybersecurity, the use of AI will be less optional. This will create friction for users and customers who attempt to opt out, as their current tools will hit limits on effectiveness. In the most extreme cases, opting out of AI may even shift liability away from the service provider and back onto the user.

The Workforce Reshuffle: AI Prompts a Side-Hustle Economy

As AI continues its world domination, both good and evil, we will continue to see rapid monetization. Users and companies will rapidly expand how they can moonlight and generate revenue from it.

Whether through AI-generated content on social media platforms or new AI models engineered for specific outcomes, the growth potential is undeniable. We’ve already seen massive expansion in how AI is tuned to excel in certain tasks, such as writing, business planning, content creation, data analysis, coding, translation, and more—all of which are now being marketed for use with subscription fees.

Ultimately, the consumption of these AI tools will result in thousands of new apps becoming available to download online, through the Apple App Store or on Google Play, with market saturation driving down their cost. The ease of access, customization, and training of these AI apps will continue to allow users and businesses to capitalize on their sale for mass consumption.

As jobs are replaced by AI, organizations will need to find a balance between employee productivity and efficiency. This will force people to expand their skillsets to remain relevant in the job market, while solidifying a robust market for moonlighting.

The Identity and Access Reckoning

Account Poisoning: The Next Evolution of Financial Fraud

In the next year, we’ll witness a ramp-up in attack vectors poisoning consumer and business accounts as threat actors find novel ways to insert fraudulent billers and payees—or worse, modify existing ones. These cybercriminals will process funds via third-party brokers and link them to transactions that exfiltrate funds.

Attacks on personal and business financial accounts are nothing new. Online banking and digital transactions have become the norm for receiving and paying e-bills over the last two decades. It’s not uncommon for trusted billers and payees to be compromised by threat actors seeking to siphon funds destined for legitimate sources. While this is just one example, we expect account poisoning to rise next year because currently, financial organizations only defend against account attacks at an individual level.

The “poison" comes from a high degree of automation that allows for the creation of payees and billers, the requesting of funds, and linking to other online payment processing sources. This entire attack vector will occur due to weaknesses in online financial systems, the exposed nature of accounts (if the credentials or routing and account numbers are compromised), and the ease with which automation can obfuscate a transaction in a current account.

This will require greater diligence in identity confidence for any changes in a user’s financial accounts, especially with regards to automation, where poor secrets management could be leveraged to attack accounts in bulk.

Backdated Breaches: Historic Identity Compromises Catch Up

Expect the skeletons to come out of the identity and access management (IAM) cupboard in 2026 as heightened focus on identity security leads to the unearthing of rogue identities and other artifacts from long past breaches, which were never-before detected.

As organizations adopt modern identity security platforms with graph-based analytics, they’ll uncover rogue identities that remain in active use and require an immediate response, along with others representing long-ago compromises that were missed. These historic, rogue identities will raise many questions. With many potentially being older than the security logs the organizations retain, it may be impossible to understand the true extent or nature of the historic breach.

Organizations will need to close the gaps between security and IAM teams and their tooling to mitigate future identity risks and avoid repeating the same mistakes. This will raise awareness of the old problems with joiner-mover-leaver processes and place them, once again, in the spotlight of organizations.

The Death of VPN: Why Legacy Remote Access Must End

We are at the dawn of a mass movement away from VPN technology. For the future of modern remote access, VPN will be seen as a liability—a vulnerability waiting to be exploited.

VPN has served its purpose for organizations over many years, but the current risk and threat landscape proves it is simply not secure enough for modern threats. Today, VPN screams "attack me!" while waving at adversaries and inviting unnecessary risks.

Modern threat actors have mastered VPN exploitation techniques. From harvesting credentials to leveraging compromised VPN appliances as persistent access points, these legacy solutions have become liability magnets.

Many organizations have walked the line between providing secure remote access paths for certain critical infrastructure, while still allowing VPN access for other aspects of the business. Not anymore. It's simply too risky.

If your organization still relies on traditional VPN infrastructure, especially for critical or privileged access, you're operating on borrowed time.

Physical-Digital Convergence

Tag, You’re It: from AirTag to Target

The malicious use of low-cost geolocation trackers for reconnaissance in cyber-physical attacks is set to escalate in 2026, leading to more public incidents.

Location identification devices, like Apple AirTags, Life360 Tiles, etc., have ample use cases, from tracking lost keys to determining where your missing luggage ended up. Even clothing manufacturers have gotten into the game, allowing AirTags to be inserted into the soles of sneakers so worried parents can locate their frolicking minors. Organizations like The Alzheimer’s Association also promote the use of location trackers to help those living with dementia maintain safer independence.

Of course, with such information, malicious use cases are bound to happen. We’ve already seen nefarious intent to stalk individuals and tracking by jealous partners. Now, threat actors are taking these devices to the next level by placing AirTags on high-value assets, like armored trucks, shipping containers, and even personnel. Placed on such assets, AirTags are used to map routes and schedules, determine drop-off locations, and inform plans on where a physical robbery would be most likely to succeed.

Users and vendors will have to re-evaluate and strengthen security controls for monitoring these devices and the public sharing of their geolocation. Defenses could include new features that allow granular controls over Bluetooth devices and prevent them from reporting foreign trackers to the cloud, or placing jamming devices on high-value assets to block unauthorized tracking.

Regardless of new security features and controls, the increasing exploitation of this technology proves that even the best intentions can be warped into attack vectors for future crimes.

Workforce Nomads Trample What’s Left of the Network Perimeter

The network and endpoint perimeter will erode almost entirely, forcing identity to become the new anchor as organizations work to secure a workforce that has moved past “remote” to become increasingly mobile and distributed.

As geopolitical tensions increase and discourse becomes more polarized, remote employees will start to consider temporary or permanent relocations. This is made more attractive by an increasing number of countries offering “digital nomad” visas to support temporary relocations of remote workers who provide economic stimulus. This trend will be further amplified by a new generation in the workforce who are used to short-term, gig economy work and are seeking to replicate the travel agendas of social media influencers.

Nomadic employees present several cybersecurity challenges. They may relocate without notifying their employers, handle sensitive information outside of approved geographies, or connect corporate devices in high-risk environments.

The organizations who will best succeed in managing their digital nomads will have powerful identity visibility that allows them to not only uncover technical risks, but also understand how and where identities, accounts, privileges, and access are being used.

Alexa, Set Home Systems to Secure

Expect to see exciting new breakthroughs in advanced voice-to-home automation that will bridge technology gaps and overcome resistance from users.

Many of us have struggled with cutting-edge technology and its adoption, especially when it comes at the cost of privacy and access to your email, calendar, and day-to-day digital lives. We’ve already witnessed household tools, like garage door openers, withdraw from integrations for security reasons. But what if secure home automation got easier? What if we could simply ask for something to be done instead of having to configure it on an app?

Imagine setting up your irrigation and tree watering, configuring your pool pump schedule, and programming your garage lights to activate when the door opens—all through a simple voice request. You could even tell your Netgear router to place your doorbell camera, home security cameras, Wi-Fi switches, and smart TVs on a dedicated VLAN, allowing access only from internally connected devices.

For years, we’ve relied on complex IFTTT logic, or paid experts hundreds of dollars to make our houses smarter. In 2026, expect these manual tasks to become automated via simple, native voice prompts that allow for much more advanced configuration.

Market Forces Shaping the Horizon

AI Fallout Anticipates the Rise of Omni-AI

For the next year, we can expect accelerated adoption of AI. However, in the mid-term, dozens of micro disciplines (like agentic AI) will be superseded by Omni-AI, a single, catch-all concept that can be used everywhere and for everything.

The AI bubble has popped, spawning thousands of little bubbles—from agentic AI to generative AI—that are all progressing in different directions and velocities. Now, it’s sink or swim time for all the new startups focused on “AI”. Many of these micro-AI bubbles will simply burst and fade into the ether.

The bottom line is strictly financial. According to leading analyst firms, 85% of AI implementations fail in the first year. The plethora of vendors offering AI solutions has climaxed, and seed funding from angel investors and venture capital firms is drying up. This is already starting to cause the overall pool to rapidly shrink. By the mid-term, any truly innovative vendor will have been acquired or OEM-licensed for their technology, leaving a few omni-AI platforms (the mega vendors) to carry us through the next phase of the AI hype cycle.

This isn’t all doom and gloom; it’s a natural progression for any new technology as market hype collides with financial reality. However, with AI, obsolescence actually outpaced maturity. The hype exceeded the expectations.

MITRE Rises from the Ashes

The recent internal and financial shake-up across MITRE has created uncertainty about the future of modern risk mitigation and the MITRE ATT&CK® framework, potentially leading to its demise, followed by a rebirth under a new banner.

The events over the last year—including departing executive leadership, reduced financial backing, and organizations pulling their support—have delivered significant blows to MITRE. While many organizations have continued to financially back MITRE and support its growth and evolution in mitigating threats, this feels like the beginning of the demise for the trusted MITRE risk mitigation framework.

We can't predict whether a government entity will step in and rescue it financially (a smart move, given the current threat landscape’s relationship to national security). But, we can envision some type of rebirth for MITRE and the ATT&CK framework. This reincarnation will likely transpire under a new name (we suggest the Phoenix Framework, with a nod to the legendary immortal bird from Greek mythology), and will be supported by those who wish to reforge from the ashes of what MITRE was into something new, modern, and capable of guiding organizations through the mitigation of future risks.

Data Sovereignty Draws New Borderlands

By 2027, data sovereignty will no longer just refer to where data resides; it will also be a determining factor in where and how data can be stored, processed, and secured. This will impact everything from architecture to AI strategy, to global operations.

While there have been several efforts to align data sovereignty controls over the years, the next wave of regulation will usher in a major shift in how organizations think about and manage data.

When California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) came into effect, it revolutionized how browser data was classified as personally identifiable information (PII) and sparked a global movement that practically changed the internet experience overnight. Cookie consent pop-ups went from novel to universal almost instantly.

That was just the beginning. Data (especially PII) has become one of the most heavily-targeted commodities for threat actors, and AI is continuing to accumulate ever-growing data banks. As a result, we can expect data sovereignty laws to become much more stringent. The question of where lines get drawn for legal jurisdiction, control and access, security and compliance, or even physical location, will become increasingly complex.

On one side, governments will tighten their regulatory grip and increase revenue streams driven by fines. On the opposite end of the spectrum, organizations (whether they be global, regional, or even local) will struggle to keep up with constantly changing laws and regulations. Businesses may begin coping with these new realities by treating regulatory fines as operating expenses, similar to how ransomware is now baked into the cost of doing business.

Similar to the early days of CCPA, the next phase of data sovereignty will be vague, unclear, and open for a lot of interpretation before we find the way to adopt and enforce it. The real questions are, how long until we no longer have a choice on how we handle data, and where exactly do the lines get drawn between being data sovereign compliant and not?

Beyond Silicon: Biological & Cognitive Computing

Technology Goes Organic: The Birth of Biological Computers

The next five years will usher in the rapid progression of biological computers as they push through the limitations of silicon, GPUs, and near-absolute-zero temperature requirements for quantum computing.

If you haven’t heard of Cortical Labs or organic computers, you may need to rewatch your favorite science fiction show and consider the possibilities of neural gel packs or organic tech being used for faster-than-light travel.

While we are constantly immersed in the evolution of quantum computing and artificial intelligence, we are still working with technology from within the confines of engineered materials and existing algorithms. Now, enter biological computers, where real neurons are nurtured inside a nutrient-rich solution, allowing them to grow across a silicon chip. This environment produces a computing structure that sends and receives electrical impulses, enabling next-generation AI and processing.

While this may seem like science fiction, nascent versions are available today. Soon, the moral and ethical issues of using neurons designed to think for themselves—much like the past debates over stem cells—will spark concerns and lead to legislation we’ve never considered before.

AI’s Next Big Leap: The Physical, Emotional Companion

Companion AI will create a permanent niche market within the next five years, merging with household robots and androids to provide a realistic physical connection.

If you’re not familiar with companion AI technology, it’s an evolution in generative AI that provides support, companionship, and a digital relationship for individuals who feel deficits of interaction with other humans for many reasons. As a medical tool, companion AI could help the elderly and disabled. The technology could even aid in careers like space travel that may require long-term isolation.

In the next five years, this technology will gain mainstream traction, merging with household robots and androids to provide a realistic physical connection with the user. While these devices may or may not appear in humanoid form (picture the robotic “dog”, Amazon Astro), companion AI will be coming to households, workplaces, and even public spaces in the near future.

We’ll soon see AI companions filling a wide variety of jobs and performing supporting roles where human-centric communication is merged with a physical avatar, fulfilling the simple need for companionship.

The Future of Identity and Society

You Are the New Cryptographic Key

Advanced biometrics, extending far beyond today’s fingerprints and facial recognition, will become widely used, offering phishing-resistant, frictionless access that is impossible to share, steal, or forget.

As our lives become increasingly AI-enabled, we’ll leverage a combination of unique signals from wearable devices and scanning technologies to continuously authenticate a user’s identity as part of a zero trust model. Although we expect some initial hesitation due to privacy concerns, the sheer convenience will tip the balance, as users will no longer need to remember passwords or deal with MFA friction.

This development will blur the lines between personal and corporate identities as they share a common authentication mechanism. Consequently, threat actors will attempt to use AI to spoof biometric data and bypass a new range of Trusted Person Platform Modules (TPPM) that verify the user’s biometrics and identity.

Supply Chain Risk Increases (Again)

The increasing complexity of supply chains, paired with lack of visibility into them, will result in more breaches. Nation states and sophisticated threat actors will approach supply chains as force multipliers that can enable them to target entire nations or industries.

The demand for improved visibility will prompt requests for third-party software bill of materials (SBOMs) to expand into requests for AI/ML bill of materials, covering the AI tools and algorithms in the supply chain that could be exploited. As the risks from quantum computing rise, we will also see more focus on developing a cryptographic bill of materials (CBOM) to ensure encryption used in the supply chain is resistant to quantum threats.

With increased connectivity and interdependence, there will be a need to harden identity security across supply chains to minimize the risks of third-party identity compromise being used to breach another organization.

I, City: Enter Autonomous Cities and the World of Robots

The not-so-distant future will herald the rise of fully smart cities, where most everything is done autonomously.

Only self-driving vehicles will be allowed within the city limits. Shops will be autonomously manned, and robots will cook your meals, serve your food, and make your coffee. Going to the doctor will mean seeing Eyevan, the robot eye doctor.

While many of us might think of this as pure fiction, it's not that far-fetched when you think about how much AI is already replacing human workers in routine roles. Now, multiply this beyond conventional means. While we don't think we are prepared for it mentally, the dreamers of the world will make it a reality.

While anticipating trends can help poise you for success, staying secure isn’t about getting every prediction or guess right. It’s about consistently executing fundamental best practices to ensure security hygiene and minimize the risk surface. This also means extending those best practices to new spheres of technology, whether it’s AI, nomadic workforces, or neoclouds.

In other words, (and one final prediction), here are some fundamentals we foresee helping our readers effectively embrace the promises of the emerging evolving technology landscape, while reducing threat exposures, in 2026 and beyond:

• Tailor defenses to your environment — and your threat model: Understanding your organization’s unique attack surface is more critical than ever as AI and identity-driven threats evolve. Map your exposure across network, identity, and agentic AI pathways to prioritize controls, patching, and mitigations where they’ll have the greatest impact.

• Extend zero trust and least privilege principles across every layer: Apply identity-first security consistently across human and non-human accounts, networks, applications, endpoints, and clouds. In a post-perimeter world, privilege boundaries and access controls—not location—define your security posture.

• Secure modern access pathways beyond legacy tools: Replace or augment vulnerable technologies like VPNs and RDP with modern, identity-aware access solutions that enforce adaptive authentication, session monitoring, and just-in-time access—minimizing exposure from anywhere in the world.

• Gain visibility into identity and AI-driven attack paths: Implement Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) and AI security governance controls to understand the True Privilege™ of all identities and AI agents. Identify and defend potential privilege escalation pathways before they’re exploited.

• Harden your hybrid environments for the next frontier of threats: Take a holistic view of interconnected systems—including agentic AI, neocloud environments, and distributed workforces. Strengthen controls where vulnerabilities or misconfigurations could become stepping stones for attackers.

Ready to push past predicting the future and start securing it?

Take the no-cost BeyondTrust Identity Security Risk Assessment (ISRA) to uncover your greatest exposure points and build an identity-aware plan that is ready for 2026 and beyond. You can also contact us at any time here.

The BeyondTrust team has been making security predictions for more than 10 years. Want to see how we’ve fared over the years? Check out some of our past forecasts below!

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