By: Sam Salehi, Managing Director ANZ, Qualys
As we head into 2026, cybersecurity leaders are facing a paradox. Organisations have never invested more in security tools, data and talent – yet many CISOs admit they have less confidence in their true risk posture than ever before.
The problem isn’t a lack of signals. It’s an excess of them.
Fragmented tools, disconnected data, accelerating AI adoption and rising board expectations have created an environment where security teams are busy, but not always effective. The next phase of cybersecurity maturity will be defined by one question: can organisations move from observation to decisive, business-aligned action?
Here are three predictions that will shape the CISO agenda in 2026.
By 2026, the volume of security telemetry will become unsustainable for human-led interpretation alone.
Most organisations already operate across complex hybrid environments, spanning on-premises systems, multiple clouds and a growing ecosystem of SaaS and AI-enabled tools. Each layer introduces its own security controls, dashboards and risk metrics. The result is fragmented visibility, inconsistent data and no unified view of high-risk assets or exposure.
This fragmentation creates a dangerous blind spot. When there is no single, trusted asset inventory, it becomes nearly impossible to gain a comprehensive overview of the security gaps that risk leaving businesses exposed.
Different tools report different versions of “critical” risk. One team escalates an issue while another deprioritises it based on alternative scoring models. Decisions become subjective, slow and inconsistent without a coherent strategy – and critical attack paths remain open.
If cyber risk is not presented consistently in the context of business impact, it’s nearly impossible to align cybersecurity with broader business objectives.
In 2026, leaders will no longer tolerate this ambiguity. Boards and executives don’t want more dashboards. They want clarity. They want to understand how assets, risks, threats and business value intersect — and where intervention (and investment) will deliver the greatest reduction in risk.
This will force a shift away from siloed, reactive security activity toward integrated risk operations that consolidate signals into a single operating picture. Visibility alone will not be enough. What will matter is alignment across the organisation and the ability to translate and contextualise raw security data into prioritised, business-relevant actions.
The rise of AI underscores the need to reinforce existing security frameworks, not reinvent them. AI accelerates the speed and complexity of threats, but the core principles of infrastructure and software pipeline security still apply. Yet many organisations are layering generic AI security controls across the enterprise without truly understanding what’s at risk.
Without this clarity, security teams spread themselves thin — attempting to “secure all AI” equally, regardless of business impact, and in some cases using AI to de-risk the AI itself.
The risk is compounded by the accessibility of AI to attackers. Social engineering campaigns are already more convincing, more personalised and harder for users to detect. Messages sound legitimate. Voices and content appear authentic. The line between real and fake is blurring at scale.
In 2026, mature organisations will take a more disciplined approach. They will map AI initiatives to business objectives, identify which revenue streams and operational processes depend on them, and quantify the value at risk. This allows CISOs to demonstrate where existing investments meaningfully reduce exposure — and where they don’t — while maintaining operational integrity and trust.
With capital increasingly diverted to AI initiatives, CFOs will demand this transparency. Security leaders who can quantify residual risk in business terms will be better positioned to justify further investment or divest controls that no longer deliver value. AI risk management will become a core component of enterprise risk management — not a parallel exercise.
By 2026, automation will no longer be optional. The speed, scale and complexity of modern threats have already outpaced manual processes — and AI is the only viable way to keep up.
Agentic AI will play a critical role, not by replacing humans, but by changing how security work gets done.
AI agents will take over high-volume, repetitive tasks — continuously analysing vast streams of telemetry, correlating signals across environments, and surfacing the handful of risks that truly matter. They will identify the needle in the haystack.
Humans will remain firmly in the loop. As execution becomes automated, the role of the CISO and security teams will shift from tactical responders to strategic decision-makers — focusing on how to eliminate risk across attack paths, which controls to adjust, and where to accept, mitigate or transfer risk.
This combination of machine speed and human judgment will define effective security operations. Agentic AI handles the execution layer, delivering real-time, risk-informed insights, while leaders focus on systemic risk, resilience and alignment with business strategy.
Automation without context simply accelerates noise. Embedded within a business-context-driven operating model, agentic AI becomes a force multiplier for resilience — not just efficiency.
Ultimately, the CISOs who succeed in 2026 will be those who replace noise with clarity — and mere observation with action.
