Cybersecurity for 2026: The shift to cloud-first resilience

As the year begins, you are probably seeing plenty of “cybersecurity 2026” blog posts. Most will outline their take on the major risks. Many will suggest sensible mitigations. Few will tell you how to make the most of the tools you already have or where to find budget for any additional solutions you might need in the course of the year ahead.

That's why this blog post is worth seven minutes of your time.

True resilience

The truth is that the major challenge for cybersecurity in 2026 isn't just about new and emerging threats. It's about addressing them (as well as existing threats) while simultaneously managing budgets that are already stretched thin.

In my view, building real cybersecurity in 2026 starts by getting more from what you already have before adding any new tools. Organizations that take this cost-optimised approach don't just save money. They strengthen resilience by focusing on the fundamentals that actually mitigate breaches.

Here's what that looks like in practise when applied to some of the threats I think may indeed loom large in the weeks and months ahead.

Five forces shaping cybersecurity in 2026

Five major forces are coming together to reshape how organisations should approach security this year. Understanding these will help you prioritise where a cost-optimised approach could have the greatest impact on protecting your organisation.

1. Threats from agentic AI. Last year we saw the first cases of agentic AI used by adversaries, automating and scaling their operations with unprecedented speed. These AI agents plan and act semi-autonomously across multiple steps. Their impact in a security context is that what used to take weeks of reconnaissance can now happen in hours. Credentials harvesting, phishing campaigns, and vulnerability exploitation are becoming faster and more precisely targeted. Defenders need to keep pace but this does not necessarily mean rushing to buy artificial intelligence security tools as a countermeasure. Instead, start by making sure your existing defences are properly configured, actively monitored, and actually working. By ensuring your configurations are secure-by-default, continuously monitored, and actively remediated—principles advocated in Microsoft’s Cloud Security Benchmark and Zero Trust best practises—you can reduce your risk of data breaches by 30–50%.
2. Risks through Generative AI adoption. The agentic threat is amplified by the generative power of easily accessed AI tools. Many of these major artificial intelligence tools have experienced security breaches since launch. Innovation is outpacing security controls by a significant margin. Risks include prompt injection attacks, data leakage, model jailbreaking, and malicious code injection among others. The solution isn’t banning artificial intelligence implementations altogether. That won’t work because it’s simply an invitation for shadow IT to proliferate in your organisation. Instead, the solution starts by getting security teams involved early in projects, implementing (and enforcing) policies that limit data exposure, and adopting emerging governance frameworks. There are security governance frameworks available to support secure development and/ or adoption of GenAI tools but if the security teams are not on-board or do not have skills to operate in this area, chances of secure AI adoption are slim.
   
   (TL;DR: most organisations already have at least some of the tools needed to secure artificial intelligence implementations. Things like identity, access, logging, DLP, and governance tools. Many have simply not applied them as well as they could.)
3. Your supply chain is your weakest link. The SolarWinds breach in 2020 resulted in a $26 million class action settlement. It remains a cautionary tale for every organisation. Attackers compromised the Orion platform's software update process, affecting thousands of customers including multiple United States government agencies. The breach exploited trust relationships and monitoring gaps that should not have existed. Today supply chain risk is higher than ever and is a key part of national security standards worldwide.
   
   Organizations need to treat third-party access with the same scrutiny as external threats. That involves a change of attitude rather than any immediate need for additional investment.
4. Regulatory pressure will continue escalating across jurisdictions. The European Union's Network and Information Security Directive (NIS2), Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), and similar regulations worldwide are making security compliance mandatory. Individual executive liability is real and growing. Boards are demanding regular resilience reports backed by evidence. The regulatory environment in 2026 will treat security failures as governance failures, with legal and financial consequences for leadership. This isn't fear-mongering and it can’t be fixed simply by spending money. It's the new operating environment across multiple sectors and it needs to be accommodated at Board level by decision making on policy and expert external partnership where necessary.



Cybersecurity 2026: a Board-level agenda item

Cybersecurity has become a core Board level risk, and regulators now expect active oversight, not box ticking. Public companies must describe their cybersecurity risk management strategy and Board oversight under the US SEC’s 2023 rules on cybersecurity risk management, strategy, governance, and incident disclosure (Regulation S K Item 106 and Form 8 K Item 1.05). In the EU, the NIS2 Directive requires management bodies of in scope entities to approve and oversee cybersecurity risk management measures and incident reporting, backed by strengthened supervision and sanctions.

In New York, NYDFS Cybersecurity Regulation 23 NYCRR Part 500 requires a Board or equivalent governing body of covered financial institutions to approve cybersecurity policies and oversee the programme through regular reporting. Such regimes highlight that Boards which ignore cyber risk expose their organisations to regulatory enforcement, financial loss, operational disruption, and reputational damage.

If you are on the Board of your organisation, start 2026 by doing a few simple things to help improve your organisation’s resilience.

• Demand regular, third-party-validated resilience reports from chief information security officers, not just compliance checklists
• Hold leaders accountable for implementing security hygiene across the entire organisation through relevant security and risk management KPIs
• Demand security to be integrated into the business, supported by security KPIs in business organisations.


5. Organizations are still failing at the security fundamentals. The Finnish Vastaamo psychotherapy centre breach exposed the therapy records of around 33,000-36,000 patients. The cause? A failure to follow well-established best practises in safe service maintenance and protection, exposing the server to cyberattack. Marks & Spencer suffered a forecasted £300 million ($400 million USD) impact equating to 30.5% of the company’s operating profit after ransomware infiltrated via a third-party contractor in early 2025. The attack exposed two truths: supply chain risk is real, and neglecting security fundamentals – patching, access controls, and continuity planning – invites disaster. In 2026, just like any other year, organisations that fail at the fundamentals will remain vulnerable regardless of how many advanced tools they deploy.

The gap between readiness and resilience

As you can see from this list, my view is that some of the biggest threats you’re likely to face in 2026 will not necessarily exploit missing capabilities in your technology stack. They will exploit misconfigured environments and underutilised security capabilities you have already paid for. Firewalls with overly permissive rules that nobody reviewed. Multi-factor authentication deployed but not enforced across critical systems. Vulnerability scanners running automatically but patches not applied for months. EDR in place but devices are not hardened. Monitoring systems collecting gigabytes of data that no one actually reviews or teams are suffering from alert fatigue.

As we start a new year, this is the difference between a false sense of security and true resilience. Believing “we have tools, so we are secure” creates a dangerous illusion. Resilience is different: it’s active and continuous. It means improving your security posture every day, detecting misconfigurations before attackers do, and remediating them quickly. It also means having the capabilities to detect, respond, and recover when breaches happen, because they will happen. Cyber resilience isn’t about buzzwords or buying more tools: it’s about disciplined fundamentals and adaptability in the face of inevitable threats.

How the right partner can help

This resilience mindset can be strengthened by working with a partner that can reveal possibilities for security improvement without losing sight of the business realities. In other words, a partner who can meet you where you are today and help you move forward to a cost-optimised future.

That’s why I’m genuinely excited about the year ahead in cybersecurity because the SoftwareOne and Crayon integration has created precisely this capability for our clients. With teams operating in over 70 countries and deep partnerships with the major cloud and security vendors, our combined organisation brings both global reach and local presence to security optimisation challenges.

We’re not here just to sell more tools to organisations. We’re here to help clients extract more measurable value from the tools they already own so they can release budget for whatever they decide are their own organisational priorities.

Get in touch: we would love to help and are happy to share some initial insights on how you can build a cost-optimised cybersecurity roadmap for 2026.