LONDON, Jan. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- 2025 saw a surge in AI-enabled cyberthreats as adversaries weaponised generative models to produce polymorphic malware, insider-style phishing, and increasingly convincing deepfake audio and video. Organisations responded by adopting AI-driven defence platforms, including autonomous intrusion detection, intelligent email protection, and continuous behavioural analytics.
With 2026 rapidly approaching, the swift pace of AI innovation, combined with the increasing financial, operational, and regulatory fallout from security breaches, makes it clear that advanced cybersecurity technology alone is insufficient. Organisations must now integrate real-world, scenario-based security awareness training to fortify their human defense layer.
Explaining the key trends shaping the 2026 threat landscape, Usman Choudhary, Chief Product & Technology Officer, VIPRE Security Group, offers his predictions for the year ahead:
AI-Native Malware and Automated Exploit Kits Will Become the Defining Threat of 2026
In 2026, cybercriminals will escalate from simply using AI tools to developing AI-native malware ecosystems. These threats will continuously rewrite their own code, evade static detection, and adapt to defensive responses in real time.
Attackers will employ LLM-driven engines to build autonomous exploit kits, capable of identifying unpatched vulnerabilities, generating tailored payloads, and executing attacks without human oversight. This marks a shift toward self-directed cyberattacks, dramatically compressing the time between reconnaissance and compromise.
AI-native tools will significantly lower the barrier to entry for novice cybercriminals, escalating risk for small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs). This trend is expected to accelerate throughout the year as bad actors increasingly leverage SMEs as "springboard" targets to infiltrate larger partners within the supply chain.
Deepfake Fraud-as-a-Service Will Drive a New Wave of Business Email Compromise (BEC)
The proliferation of deepfake creation tools is projected to surge in 2026, driven by the emergence of Fraud-as-a-Service (FaaS) marketplaces. What was once a technically complex endeavour will become easily accessible. Cybercriminals will capitalise on this trend, offering subscription-based access to highly realistic voice and video impersonation packages. These kits will be trained on data openly harvested from public sources.
These tools will enable convincing impersonations of executives, vendors, or IT personnel, resulting in a sharp rise in high-value BEC attacks, including:
- Fraudulent payment instruction scams
- Socially engineered MFA reset requests
- False customer support interactions used to harvest credentials
With remote and hybrid collaboration now normalised globally, employees will struggle to distinguish legitimate communications from synthetic ones, especially when deepfakes are combined with contextual insider knowledge scraped from social platforms.
IoT and Operational Technology (OT) Exploits Will Surge as AI Identifies Hidden Weak Points
The continued proliferation of smart devices, from connected medical equipment to industrial control systems, will significantly expand the global attack surface.
In 2026, adversaries will increasingly weaponise AI to conduct large-scale automated discovery of IoT vulnerabilities. AI-driven scanning tools will identify misconfigurations, weak authentication schemes, and legacy firmware at a pace and scale that manual scanning cannot match.
Critical infrastructure operators, logistics organisations, and healthcare providers will face the most serious consequences, with attackers aiming to cause:
- Operational downtime
- Manipulation of sensor data
- Disruptions to manufacturing or service delivery
- Ransomware designed to halt essential processes
Organisations will need to adopt zero-trust segmentation, continuous device monitoring, and robust patching frameworks to mitigate these risks.
Supply Chain Attacks Using AI-Augmented Exploits Will Reach Record Levels
2025 demonstrated that supply chain attacks remain one of the most efficient pathways for large-scale compromise. In 2026, attackers will amplify these attacks with AI-generated exploit code and automated vulnerability identification across software dependencies.
Threat actors will:
- Inject malicious components into widely used open-source software
- Compromise third-party service providers to access enterprise networks
- Use AI to simulate developer coding styles, making malicious commits harder to detect
- Leverage autonomous bots to scan repositories for exploitable misconfigurations
Enterprises will need to adopt stronger software integrity verification, secure coding practices, and automated supply chain monitoring to keep pace with these threats.
New Global AI and Privacy Regulations Will Intensify Compliance Pressures - Heightening the Need for Employee Security Awareness Training
With cyberattacks rising in frequency and sophistication, 2025 saw governments worldwide accelerate regulatory action. In 2026, regulatory expansion will intensify as countries implement new AI governance frameworks and strengthen data protection laws.
Key drivers include:
- Strengthening of the EU AI Act with new operational compliance checkpoints
- Expanded U.S. state-level privacy and algorithmic accountability laws
- APAC countries introducing AI transparency and risk-mitigation frameworks
- Global proposals mandating reporting of AI-generated cyber incidents
As regulatory expectations solidify and penalties for breaches rise, human error will persist as the primary cause of compliance failures. Expensive breaches will continue to result from issues such as misdelivery, inadequate handling of customer data, and deficient verification protocols, particularly when dealing with deepfakes.
This regulatory landscape will make comprehensive, real-world security awareness training essential for demonstrating compliance, reducing risk, and protecting organisational reputation.
About VIPRE Security Group
VIPRE Security Group, the cybersecurity division of Ziff Davis, is one of the world's leading providers of cybersecurity solutions tailored for midsize to large enterprises. With nearly three decades of experience serving thousands of organisations and a global partner community, VIPRE's integrated cloud-based security solutions span across endpoint, email, compliance training, MDR, threat sandbox analysis, and threat intelligence data feeds. VIPRE provides the highest efficacy AI/ML-based advanced threat protection in the industry and simultaneously provides human risk mitigation tools through educational initiatives, GenAI tools, and technologies to empower users with a vision to democratise cybersecurity. Additionally, VIPRE's Inspired eLearning, the most awarded security awareness and phishing simulation platform in the industry, provides security awareness and compliance training for every business. VIPRE operates globally under various brands, including VIPRE, StrongVPN, IPVanish, Inspired eLearning, Livedrive, and SugarSync. More information at www.VIPRE.com.
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