The cybersecurity landscape is expanding at an unprecedented pace as digital transformation accelerates across industries. Many organisations now depend on complex interconnected systems that span cloud services, mobile endpoints, hybrid on-premises infrastructure, and increasingly sophisticated supply chains. This growth in dependency means that the consequences of breaches are more severe than ever before. Firms must prepare for any eventuality, from operational disruption to financial loss, reputational damage, and regulatory penalties.
For security leaders and practitioners, the challenge is to move early. Preparing for quantum risk, rationalising bloated toolsets, hardening human and identity processes, and embedding automation across development and operations are not future projects. They are present-day indicators of maturity. Organisations that treat these shifts as strategic priorities rather than tactical upgrades will be better positioned to absorb shocks, meet regulatory expectations, and operate with confidence in an increasingly hostile digital environment.
Quantum computing and encryption
Quantum computing continues to advance toward capabilities that could undermine the mathematical foundations of widely used public-key cryptography (for example, RSA and ECC). While large-scale “cryptographically relevant” quantum computers are not yet a reality, industry groups such as the World Federation of Exchanges are already treating quantum risk as a high-impact concern for sectors like financial markets. Research in quantum threats suggests that once sufficiently powerful quantum systems arrive, they could decrypt previously captured encrypted traffic, exposing decades of sensitive data.
In response, regulators and standards bodies are promoting crypto agility, the capability for systems to swap out cryptographic algorithms fluidly as threats evolve. NIST defines crypto agility as the ability to replace and adapt cryptographic algorithms and protocols without disrupting operations.
What cyber experts should prioritise in 2026:
- Conduct comprehensive inventories of where and how cryptography is used across applications and infrastructure.
- Assess the risk of long-lived encrypted data being harvested now for later decryption.
- Initiate phased planning for integration of quantum-resistant algorithms and transition strategies well before quantum breakthroughs occur.
Aligning with expanding cyber regulations
Cybersecurity regulation is proliferating globally and spanning a broader set of outcomes, from breach reporting to operational resilience and supply-chain security. Numerous jurisdictions now require mandatory reporting timelines, third-party risk assessments, and evidence of governance practices. This regulatory diversity creates complexity for organisations operating across borders.
Looking ahead to 2026, security teams will be evaluated not only on technical controls but on demonstrable regulatory compliance as part of risk management. Regulatory frameworks such as the EU’s NIS2 Directive, US sector-specific rules like those emerging in financial and critical infrastructure sectors, and the UK’s Cyber Security and Resilience Bill mean increasing cybersecurity expectations.
What cyber experts should prioritise in 2026:
- Embed compliance requirements into core security operations, not as a separate audit function.
- Develop integrated processes that align legal, risk, and security teams for coordinated readiness.
- Move from reactive audit preparation to continuous readiness and verification.
Platform consolidation
Today’s typical enterprise security stack includes a large number of point tools: endpoint protection, firewalls, cloud security posture management, identity management, threat intelligence feeds, SIEM/SOAR, and more. When these tools lack integration, visibility gaps emerge that slow detection and response times.
In 2026, organisations that prioritise tool consolidation and streamlined workflows will have a relative advantage in efficiency and manageability. Market research also indicates that consolidation and platform rationalisation are increasing as vendors expand suites to cover more threat vectors.
What cyber experts should prioritise in 2026:
- Map tool overlap and redundancy to identify opportunities for consolidation.
- Evaluate integrated platforms that unify identity, detection, and response capabilities.
- Prioritise tools with open APIs and orchestration capabilities for automation readiness.
Human-centred security awareness
Humans remain a central vulnerability in cybersecurity. Attackers increasingly employ social engineering tactics such as personalised phishing, deepfake audio, and consent exploitation to bypass technical controls. Static annual training programs offer limited protection against adaptive and targeted social attacks.
In 2026, effective awareness must shift toward continuous assessment of human behaviour and measurable risk exposure. This includes role-specific training, context-aware security nudges, and integration of user risk scoring into broader threat models.
What cyber experts should prioritise in 2026:
- Deploy continuous, behaviour-based security education tailored to job functions.
- Track and analyse user interaction data to identify evolving risk patterns.
- Use metrics that tie training outcomes to actual risk reductions rather than participation rates.
Privacy-enhancing technologies are rising
Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) encompass techniques such as homomorphic encryption, secure multi-party computation, and confidential computing. They allow organisations to derive insights from data while protecting sensitive content at all stages, including at rest, in motion, or in use.
The PETs market is growing rapidly, forecast to more than double by 2030, as regulatory pressures like data-protection standards and commercial demand for secure analytics converge.
What cyber experts should prioritise in 2026:
- Identify analytics and collaboration workflows where PETs can reduce exposure without disrupting productivity.
- Incorporate PETs into cross-border data transfer strategies to support privacy compliance.
- Pilot homomorphic encryption or confidential computing in high-risk environments.
Help desk social engineering will exploit identity recovery
Attackers are shifting focus toward help desk processes because they provide a human-oriented bypass of many technical safeguards. Identity recovery functions, things like password resets, MFA resets, and account unlocks, are often weakly protected because support teams prioritise rapid access restoration.
In 2026, organisations should recognise that help desk identity recovery is a high-risk control point requiring the same rigor as core authentication systems.
What cyber experts should prioritise in 2026:
- Enforce strong verification protocols for identity recovery requests.
- Monitor help desk workflows for anomalous activity and patterns indicative of social engineering.
- Apply least-privilege principles to limit help desk authority and access.
Cyber warfare affects companies, too
Nation-state cyber operations are actively targeting private companies, who face real spillover effects via supply-chain compromises, infrastructure disruptions, and manipulated data integrity. Ransomware and intrusion campaigns attributed to state-linked actors increasingly intersect with criminal ecosystems.
This geopolitical dimension of risk requires organisations to elevate state-linked threats in enterprise risk assessments and resilience planning. This should include possible exposure to high risk jurisdictions such as Russia, Iran, China and North Korea.
What cyber experts should prioritise in 2026:
- Expand threat models to include state-aligned and hybrid adversaries.
- Exercise scenarios involving prolonged operational disruption.
- Prioritise resilience measures that enable rapid recovery and continuity.
Cloud, edge and hybrid environments expand attack surface
As enterprises distribute workloads across cloud services, edge computing nodes, and on-premises infrastructure, inconsistent security controls create exploitable gaps. Attackers focus less on individual system breaches and more on cross-environment attack paths that evade isolated controls.
Achieving unified visibility and consistent policy enforcement across environments will be a hallmark of more mature security programs in 2026.
What cyber experts should prioritise in 2026:
- Consolidate monitoring and logging across cloud, edge, and on-premises layers.
- Enforce unified identity and access policies across distributed systems.
- Adopt cloud-native security models that extend to edge deployments.
DevSecOps & security automation is a must
Traditional manual security reviews cannot keep up with rapid development cycles and continuous delivery practices. Integrating security tooling and testing into DevOps pipelines, commonly known as DevSecOps, enables earlier detection of vulnerabilities and automated policy enforcement.
In 2026, organisations that lack automated security processes will face slower remediation and higher residual risk. Experts should focus on embedding policy enforcement, testing, and monitoring into development and deployment workflows by default.
What cyber experts should prioritise in 2026:
- Embed security gates in CI/CD pipelines, including automated static and dynamic analysis.
- Enable automated alerting, remediation playbooks, and integration with incident response platforms.
- Align development, security, and operations teams on shared automation metrics.
Identity is the new perimeter
As traditional network perimeters dissolve in hybrid and cloud-centric architectures, identity becomes the primary basis for trust, access control, and accountability. Zero-trust strategies emphasise continuous authentication and dynamic access decisions based on identity and risk context rather than network location. Compromised or misused identities will continue to be the root cause of a majority of breaches.
What cyber experts should prioritise in 2026:
- Expand identity governance to cover all user types, devices, and services.
- Enforce multi-factor and adaptive authentication across all access vectors.
- Integrate identity risk scoring into real-time access decisions.
