{"id":174203,"date":"2026-01-02T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T12:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/02\/from-ai-hype-to-ai-risk-cybersecurity-experts-share-2026-forecast-and-predictions\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T05:50:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T10:50:13","slug":"from-ai-hype-to-ai-risk-cybersecurity-experts-share-2026-forecast-and-predictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/02\/from-ai-hype-to-ai-risk-cybersecurity-experts-share-2026-forecast-and-predictions\/","title":{"rendered":"From AI Hype to AI Risk: Cybersecurity Experts Share 2026 Forecast and Predictions"},"content":{"rendered":"

From AI Hype to AI Risk: Cybersecurity Experts Share 2026 Forecast and Predictions<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/news.clearancejobs.com\/2026\/01\/02\/from-ai-hype-to-ai-risk-cybersecurity-experts-share-2026-forecast-and-predictions\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-01-02 07:30:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: news.clearancejobs.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: <\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. <\/p>\n

\t\t2025 wasn\u2019t the year of artificial intelligence (AI), but it could be remembered as the year rapid AI and AI agent adoption increased risk. Recent reports also suggested that ransomware wasn\u2019t the cause of catastrophic cybersecurity failures, but it exposed weak cybersecurity fundamentals.
\nAs we start a New Year, what trends and challenges will those working in the cybersecurity field face?
\nClearanceJobs reached out to several experts, and here is what they had to say.
\nA Shift From AI Exploration
\nAI is now part of our daily world. In the macro view, it will continue to transform industries, boost productivity, and reshape daily life. Specifically in cybersecurity, AI will continue to evolve. However, we\u2019re well past the introduction of AI.
\n\u201c2026 will represent a clear shift from AI exploration to sustained operational deployment, particularly around AI agents and agentic systems,\u201d said Jacob Krell, senior director, secure AI solutions and cybersecurity at Suzu Labs.
\nKrell told ClearanceJobs that organizations will increasingly move beyond single-model copilots toward systems composed of multiple autonomous or semi-autonomous agents that can reason, plan, and act across real business workflows.
\nAs this agentic adoption accelerates, new cybersecurity trends could emerge.
\n\u201cFirst, there will be a significant demand for AI-native cybersecurity capabilities,\u201d Krell explained. \u201cTraditional security tools are not designed to govern systems that make autonomous decisions, dynamically chain tools, or operate continuously with evolving context.\u201d
\nThis gap could drive a new class of AI-native security capabilities, including AI red teaming, agent behavior monitoring, toolchain and permission governance, integrity and hallucination controls, and safeguards that allow agents to operate with greater capability while preserving confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
\nRyan McCurdy, vice president of cybersecurity provider Liquibase, told ClearanceJobs that AI could turn low-skill attackers into credible database adversaries.
\n\u201cAI-driven database attacks will become board-level, not just CISO-level, concerns in 2026, as attackers use autonomous tools to move from \u2018script-kiddie chaos\u2019 to highly targeted, data-layer campaigns that exploit small misconfigurations, vulnerabilities like MongoBleed, and unmanaged AI agents,\u201d said McCurdy. \u201cBoards will respond by demanding continuous, platform-agnostic database governance and provable audit trails as core preconditions for AI investment, not optional hygiene.\u200b\u200b\u201d
\nAI will remain both the biggest accelerator and the biggest wildcard.
\n\u201cThreat actors will increasingly use AI agents to automate reconnaissance, phishing, lateral movement, and malware development, making attacks faster, adaptive, and harder to detect,\u201d suggested Nigel Gibbons, director and senior advisor at cybersecurity consultancy firm NCC Group: \u201cExpect an early wave of \u2018agentic malware\u2019 and AI-augmented ransomware campaigns. Instead of just encrypting systems, ransomware will shift towards greater dynamics in stealing, manipulating, and threatening to leak or alter sensitive data, targeting backups, cloud services, and supply chains.\u201d
\nA Lower Bar for Hackers
\nThe barrier to launching a targeted cyberattack will be lowered.
\n\u201cAttackers will increasingly use AI copilots and autonomous agents to read CVEs, generate exploits, build scanners, and automate post-exploitation against databases with little prior expertise,\u201d said McCurdy. \u201cRecent vulnerabilities that leak credentials and tokens from exposed MongoDB instances will be industrialized by these AI-driven workflows, turning what once required advanced skills into \u2018one-click\u2019 campaigns against the data layer.\u200b\u201d
\nOperational technology (OT) and AI will further dominate growth opportunities in 2026
\n\u201cThese technologies represent untapped threat vectors with significant potential for disruption. The lack of widespread understanding around OT environments and AI-driven systems creates a perfect storm for attackers. Organizations will invest heavily in securing these areas as they realize the risks extend beyond IT into critical infrastructure and decision-making algorithms,\u201d said Gary Cannon, transport practice lead at NCC Group.
\n\u201cThe evolving accountability landscape for CISOs will surprise many,\u201d Cannon told ClearanceJobs. \u201cHistorically, breaches were seen as \u2018experience-building\u2019 events for security leaders. By late 2026, that narrative will shift.
\nBreaches tied to poor decisions or underinvestment will have real consequences, including stalled careers.
\n\u201cOrganizations will demand proactive risk management, measurable outcomes, and transparency,\u201d Cannon added. \u201cCyber security will become a shared responsibility across the C-suite, with stronger regulatory frameworks and even personal liability for executives in certain jurisdictions.\u201d
\nNew Boundaries and Execution Paths
\nThe way that attacks are carried out is also expected to evolve.
\n\u201cRather than exploiting classic software vulnerabilities, adversaries will focus on manipulating agent trust boundaries and execution paths,\u201d said Krell. \u201cThis includes hosting malicious MCP (model context protocol) or tool servers, poisoning agent-accessible resources, abusing over-permissioned agents, and steering agent workflows to achieve attacker objectives. In many cases, the attack surface will be the agent\u2019s decision-making process itself rather than the underlying infrastructure.\u201d
\nTaken together, those trends suggest that cybersecurity in 2026 and beyond may require a different mindset. \u201cSecurity teams will need to understand how AI agents reason, interact, and fail, and how those failures can be exploited,\u201d warned Krell. \u201cOrganizations that treat AI security as a first-class discipline, rather than an extension of existing controls, will be the ones able to deploy agentic systems at scale without introducing systemic risk.\u201d
\nAn Asymmetric Shift to Autonomous Offense
\nNick Mo, CEO of Ridge Security Technology suggested that 2026 could see a widening gap between attacker agility and defender constraints. This will further result in an asymmetric shift.
\n\u201cThe primary cybersecurity threat will shift from human-led, AI-assisted attacks to fully autonomous offensive agents,\u201d said Mo. These AI entities will conduct end-to-end operations\u2014independently performing reconnaissance, mapping attack paths, and adapting exploits in real time based on defensive responses.\u201d
\nBecause adversaries operate without the legal, ethical, or regulatory guardrails that bind defenders, they can achieve asymmetric speed and scale that traditional security models are ill-equipped to handle.
\n\u201cThis evolution turns cyber warfare into a machine-speed battle, where human-in-the-loop defenses become a bottleneck rather than a safeguard,\u201d added Mo.
\nSecuring AI identities and permissions will also become as vital as managing human access in 2026.
\n\u201cOrganizations must treat AI agents as privileged users, requiring new protocols for \u2018Kill-Switch\u2019 interventions and cryptographic decision-validation to prevent autonomous systems from exceeding their intended operational boundaries,\u201d Mo told ClearanceJobs.
\nThe Mobile Threat is Looming
\nTraditional cybersecurity threats will remain in 2026 and beyond. That will include threats to mobile devices that could come from once well-trusted sources, namely the official app stores.
\n\u201cIn 2026, the narrative that app store monopolies provided a unique layer of safety will be dead,\u201d said Ted Miracco, CEO of mobile security provider Approov.
\nMicacco told ClearanceJobs that the \u201cGarden\u201d was never really a fortress. Instead, he suggested it was an instrument for extracting taxes from developers and a trusted source of apps for consumers. That trust was eroded in 2025 and will continue in the New Year.
\n\u201cMalicious apps have always found ways into the official stores, and they will continue to thrive in the newly more open ecosystem. The difference in 2026 will not be that apps are less safe, but rather that the gatekeepers can no longer use \u2018security\u2019 as a pretext for rent-seeking,\u201d said Micacco.
\nHe further suggested that the real threat in 2026 isn\u2019t the lack of a gatekeeper.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s the sheer velocity of creation,\u201d cautioned Micacco. \u201cWith VIBE programming and Generative AI, bad actors can now spin up malicious mobile slop apps at a scale and speed previously unimaginable. We are moving from \u2018hand-crafted\u2019 malware to \u2018industrialized\u2019 fraud. The \u2018slop fest\u2019 will hit new heights, but not because the stores are open; it will be a result of AI that has democratized the ability to scam users at scale.\u201d
\nMicacco predicts that, as consumer fraud and API-based attacks skyrocket in 2026, we can expect a chorus of \u201cwe told you so\u201d from the monopolists.
\n\u201cThe change in app store policies will be blamed for every breach, even if the data shows that the vulnerabilities being exploited were always there,\u201d Micacco continued. \u201cThe policy changes will not create the threat, but once it simply removes the \u2018protection\u2019 theater that kept us from looking at the real problem: the inherent fragility of mobile APIs.\u201d
\nQuick Thoughts From Experts
\nSeveral other experts provided brief warnings and recommendations for 2026.<\/p>\n

Brian Soby, co-founder & CTO at AppOmni: \u201cThe most pressing challenge for the security industry in 2026 is to protect SaaS applications, as the systems housing the majority of confidential data and forming the backbone of most IT environments. The first action is to recognize that SaaS applications present unique security risks. AppOmni research has found that the majority of organizations do not monitor their SaaS platforms, and do not know they have a security problem.\u201d
\nMelissa Ruzzi, director of AI at AppOmni: \u201cTrue AGI may not be achieved before the next decade, but as genAI evolves, it may be called AGI \u2013 which would then force the market to create a new acronym for the true AGI. The major risk in AGI is similar to that in GenAI: a focus on functionality can obscure proper cybersecurity due diligence. 2026 will be remembered as the year that the security industry realized AI is no longer optional; it\u2019s the only way to keep pace with the evolving threat landscape.\u201d
\n\u00a0Mark Frost, principal security consultant at NCC Group: \u201cCurrently, there are no specific, government-recognized standards and accreditation for the delivery of simulated physical pentesting or the people who are authorized to carry out such tests. As such, we have cheap, short physical pentests as the \u2018standard.\u2019 This gives false positive results.\u201d
\nDavid Brauchler, technical director & head of AI and ML Security at NCC Group: \u201cWhile 2025 was the year of the agent, 2026 will be the year of interactions. Multi-agent systems are gaining popularity with the adoption of communication standards such as the Model Context Protocol (MCP), and agents are being granted access to higher-trust operations, including online transactions via the Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP). We are likely to see agents\u2019 capabilities, privileges, and communication complexity grow over the next year. And their risk profile will grow alongside them.\u201d<\/p>\n

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