What will 2026 hold for cybersecurity professionals?

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas...

The end of the year means it's time to start thinking about what the future may hold as we - amzingly - edge towards the 2030s.

In 2025, Overcyte has explored increasing regulatory compliance requirements around the world, continuing threats from nation state backed actors and the need to consider not just technical network-based threats but getting your security culture sorted too.

We've thought carefully about media coverage of industry events and spoken with professionals around the world to come up with five key concerns for the year ahead:

1. Fully automated AI-enabled cyber attacks
2. Deepfake social engineering attacks go mainstream
3. Increased regulatory compliance burden on CNI operators
4. A focus on quantum-safe security readiness
5. Global tensions make cyber war more likely

There's no doubt that nation-state actors will continue targeting infrastructure - energy, water, transportation, healthcare, telecommunications - for espionage, disruption or sabotage purposes.

And the lack of proper network segmentation, out-dated firmware, poor patch management and weak authentication in ICS/OT environments remains a continual problem enabling attackers to penetrate networks, traverse and maintain persistance.

Where will you be focusing your security efforts in 2026?

Vote now in our poll and we'll be publishing further insights and guidance before the year ends.

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