Network security

Evidence from threat intelligence reporting and incident analysis in 2025 suggests that AI will move from experimental use to routine deployment in malicious cyber operations in 2026. Rather than introducing entirely new threats, AI is expected to accelerate existing attack techniques, reduce operational costs for attackers, and increase the scale and persistence of campaigns.

Security researchers and industry analysts point to ten areas where AI is most likely to reshape the cyber threat landscape over the coming year:

1. AI-enabled malware is expected to adapt during execution. Threat intelligence reporting indicates that malware using AI models is already capable of modifying behaviour in real time. In 2026, such capabilities are expected to become more common, allowing malicious code to adjust tactics in response to defensive measures.
2. AI agents are likely to automate key stages of cyberattacks. Researchers expect wider use of agentic AI systems that can independently conduct reconnaissance, exploit vulnerabilities, and maintain persistence, reducing the need for continuous human control.
3. Prompt injection will be treated as a practical attack technique against AI deployments. As organisations embed AI assistants and agents into workflows, attackers are expected to target the AI layer itself (e.g. through prompt injection, unsafe tool use, and weak guardrails) to trigger unintended actions or expose data.
4. Threat actors will use AI to target humans at scale. The text emphasises AI-enhanced social engineering: conversational bots, real-time manipulation, and automated account takeover, shifting attacks from isolated human-led attempts to continuous, scalable interaction.
5. AI will expose APIs as a too-easily-exploited attack surface. The experts argue that AI agents capable of discovering and interacting with software interfaces will lower the barrier to abusing APIs, including undocumented or unintended ones. As agents gain broader permissions and access to cloud services, APIs are expected to become a more frequent point of exploitation and concealment.
6. Extortion will evolve beyond ransomware encryption. Extortion campaigns are expected to rely less on encryption alone and more on a combination of tactics, including data theft, threats to leak or alter information, and disruption of cloud services, backups, and supply chains.
7. Cyber incidents will increasingly spread from IT into industrial operations. Ransomware and related intrusions are expected to move beyond enterprise IT systems and disrupt operational technology and industrial control environments, amplifying downtime, supply-chain disruption, and operational impact.
8. The insider threat will increasingly include imposter employees. Analysts anticipate insider risks will extend beyond malicious or negligent staff to include external actors who gain physical or remote access by posing as legitimate employees, including through hardware implants or direct device access that bypasses end point security.
9. Nation-state cyber activity will continue to target Western governments and industries. Experts point to continued cyber operations by state-linked actors, including financially motivated campaigns and influence operations, with increased use of social engineering, deception techniques, and AI-enabled tools to scale and refine targeting.
10. Identity management is expected to remain a primary failure point. The rapid growth of human and machine identities, including AI agents, across SaaS, cloud platforms and third-party environments is likely to reinforce credential misuse as a leading cause of major breaches.

Taken together, these trends suggest that in 2026, cyber risk will increasingly reflect systemic exposure created by the combination of AI adoption, identity sprawl, and interconnected digital infrastructure, rather than isolated technical failures.

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