ABI Research’s cybersecurity experts outline the most critical security shifts shaping cyber risk, regulation, and technology investment in 2026. Our industry outlook reflects how organizations must adapt to rising threats, evolve trust architectures, and join forces to minimize attacks.
The cybersecurity industry is shifting from reactive defense toward proactive resilience. Enterprises across Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) environments face a more complex threat landscape, driven by regulatory enforcement, geopolitical instability, and expanding digital infrastructure. Traditional perimeter-based security approaches are increasingly insufficient as attack surfaces grow and adversaries use ever-evolving tactics.
Network breaches are no longer isolated technical incidents. They now carry regulatory, financial, and reputational consequences that extend across supply chains.
For cybersecurity vendors, success in 2026 depends on understanding how customers are reassessing security architecture across identity, cryptography, embedded systems, cloud infrastructure, and critical networks. For Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs), identifying viable solutions and industry trajectory is essential to protecting sensitive data.
Here are ABI Research’s top nine cybersecurity trends that will shape 2026, including analyst recommendations for industry stakeholders.
Table of Contents:
1. Sovereign AI Cloud Will Evolve Into Full-Stack Control
2. AI Deepfake Oversight Will Emerge as a Core Cybersecurity Challenge
3. Physical Security Will Remain Central to Identity Protection
4. SGP.32 Will Position eSIM as a Security Enabler for the IoT
5. Platformization Will Accelerate Across Digital Trust
6. Post-Quantum Cryptography Will Struggle in Government ID Markets
7. Security-by-Design Will Gain Traction
8. Biometric Payment Cards Will Exit the Mass Market
9. GNSS Security Vulnerabilities Will Persist
1. Sovereign AI Cloud Will Evolve Into Full-Stack Control
The sovereign cloud and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are converging decisively in 2026 to create a new front of cybersecurity strategy. Cloud platforms are now one of the most urgent threats in IT security, especially as enterprise AI workloads scale. According to CrowdStrike’s The CISO’s Guide to the Cloud Threat Landscape, there has been a “136% increase in cloud intrusions in the first half of 2025 compared to all of 2024.” And 35% of cloud incidents involved valid account abuse, reflecting cyber criminals’ growing focus on identity targeting. This enables them to access enterprise networks with user credentials.
To prevent such incidents, cloud AI sovereignty has arisen as a defining cybersecurity trend in 2026. “If 2025 was the year that pushed sovereign AI to tech superstardom, 2026 is the year when they converge to form the Sov-AI megastar,” says Vice President Michela Menting. “AI protection is primarily directed at securing the valuable IP that is the Machine Learning (ML) algorithm, but increasingly there is concern with protecting the model from misuse and adversarial manipulation.”
Principal Analyst Leo Gergs adds that “Given all of its geopolitical tensions, the year 2025 underlined the importance of sovereign digital infrastructures. In 2026, this sovereignty shift will reshape the competitive landscape more profoundly, as enterprises will demand a fully sovereign AI cloud software stack.”
Menting has observed that regulatory momentum is sharpening the convergence of sovereign cloud and AI. Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is undoubtedly a key catalyst for sovereign AI activities. Beyond GDPR, European policies such as the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), NIS 2, EU Cybersecurity Certification Scheme for Cloud Services (EUCS), and the upcoming European Union (EU) Cloud Sovereignty Framework will transform sovereignty from a conceptual goal into a measurable requirement. Outside of Europe, national and state-level data privacy laws are rolling out in Asia-Pacific and the United States to combat cloud-based threats.
Menting reminds us that “ML models, and AI in general, are not typically designed with security in mind, though ML attack types have been common knowledge for more than a decade (albeit within a relatively closed circle of niche professionals). Only with the startling success of Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) in the last 2 years has concern around AI security started to surface.” She sees a growing opportunity for cybersecurity vendors to not only develop new solutions tailored for cloud sovereignty, but also reposition older technologies for this new reality.
How the cybersecurity industry should respond:
- Build sovereign AI cloud stacks with full control over infrastructure, data, identities, and models, not just regional hosting.
- Enforce zero-trust access across cloud and AI environments to reduce credential abuse and limit lateral movement.
- Strike partnerships with regional governing bodies to meet sovereignty and regulatory requirements across jurisdictional boundaries.
2. AI Deepfake Oversight Will Emerge as a Core Cybersecurity Challenge
AI-generated deepfakes are becoming more common, more realistic, and easier to create. Widely available Gen AI tools allow images and videos of real people to be manipulated at unprecedented speed and scale. Much of this content is non-consensual and sexually explicit, disproportionately affecting women and girls. As a result, deepfakes represent not only a cybersecurity risk, but also a governance and human rights issue.
The issue gained global attention following controversy around X’s AI chatbot, Grok. Between late December 2025 and January 2026, millions of non-consensual images and videos were published and shared worldwide. The incident triggered international backlash and intensified regulatory scrutiny.
Government responses have varied. Indonesia and Malaysia temporarily blocked access to Grok, while other regions pursued investigations and parliamentary debates. Lawmakers in the United Kingdom, the EU, the United States, India, and France have all expressed frustration with platform safeguards that failed to prevent sexually explicit deepfakes. There are also talks of punishing platform owners who enable the misuse of Gen AI tools (in this case, Elon Musk). On February 3, French authorities raided the X offices in Paris as part of a criminal probe.
In response, explains Senior Analyst Aisling Dawson, “PKI has been heralded as a cryptographic means of digital assurance of the provenance of AI-generated content, with vendors positing that digital signatures establish authenticity.” Digital signatures and cryptographic metadata can help identify ownership of AI-generated material and pursue legal action.
However, Dawson warns that PKI alone will not stop deepfakes from being created in the first place. “When the intention behind non-consensual sexual content is degradation and humiliation, watermarking or cryptographically signing that content does little to palliate its impact on the victims affected.”
Addressing deepfakes will require closer collaboration between policymakers and the greatest cybersecurity minds in the world. Without coordinated AI security frameworks that balance regulation, enforcement, and free expression, deepfakes will continue to claim more victims.
How the cybersecurity industry should respond:
- Build end-to-end deepfake protection that combines provenance, detection, monitoring, and response, rather than relying on isolated tools.
- Integrate PKI and content authenticity controls into AI systems by default. Be clear that these tools support accountability, not prevention.
- Work with regulators and platforms to define enforceable rules around non-consensual AI content without impeding free expression.
- Strengthen monitoring and detection to identify deepfake abuse early and limit viral spread.
3. Physical Security Will Remain Central to Identity Protection
Another emerging trend in cybersecurity is the continued importance of physical security in protecting citizen identity. Despite digital identity programs expanding globally, their adoption is progressing more slowly than originally expected.
Research Director Phil Sealy states that “Digital-first approaches that have been implemented and scaled remain few and far between on a global level. Although the market will likely continue the transition to digital-first approaches, the government ID market will remain primarily physical-first in nature, with mobile acting as a companion to the physical.”
How the cybersecurity industry should respond:
- Continue investing in advanced physical security features. Governments and citizens retain greater trust and familiarity with credentials that they can hold in their hands.
- Pay greater focus to world-class threat prevention compared to premium features (e.g., metal cards, eco-friendliness). With counterfeiters and ID thieves leveraging increasingly sophisticated attack methods, card materials take a backseat to data protection.
- Develop hybrid identity solutions that integrate physical and digital elements to align with the latest industry developments.
4. SGP.32 Will Position eSIM as a Security Enabler for the IoT
The role of connectivity in cybersecurity is expanding as Internet of Things (IoT) deployments scale across critical sectors. In 2026, Remote SIM Provisioning (RSP)-enabled embedded Subscriber Identity Module (eSIM) architecture will be essential for the long-term security of cellular IoT environments. Underpinning this evolution is the commercial availability of the GSMA’s SGP.32 specification.
“SGP.32 availability will underpin a surge in eSIM-enabled cellular IoT markets,” posits Industry Analyst Georgia Cooke. “The new specification offers significant improvements over the existing SGP.02 standard, simplifying the required architecture and providing a more customizable connectivity solution for a wider array of IoT applications.”
SGP.32 represents a significant architectural departure from SGP.02. While the earlier standard was built around stable, long-term connections with limited flexibility, SGP.32 modernizes the stack using Internet Protocol (IP)-based protocols and better support for managing constrained devices. In turn, embedded connectivity will become more accessible across a wider range of IoT use cases while improving security and control.
From a cybersecurity perspective, SGP.32’s modularity strengthens visibility and control across distributed IoT fleets. Secure provisioning, remote lifecycle management, and the ability to rotate or revoke profiles help organizations limit malware propagation and, thus, network breach risk.
In closing, Cooke predicts that “The combined evolutions in technical and commercial structures present a significant step forward, and will result in highly-driven uptake (of SGP.32 eSIM), beginning in 1Q 2026 and scaling over the course of the year.”
How the cybersecurity industry should respond:
- IoT connectivity providers/mobile operators should position SGP.32 as a security enabler, not just a connectivity upgrade, with the capacity for full ongoing updates acting as an essential mitigation against accelerating and evolving threats.
- eSIM solutions must emphasize secure provisioning, lifecycle management, and improved monitoring across constrained devices.
- Prioritize marketing outreach for the energy management, transportation, and logistics sectors, particularly emphasizing the alignment with long-term deployed device types.
5. Platformization Will Accelerate Across Digital Trust
One of the most consequential cybersecurity trends in 2026 is the platformization of digital trust services. Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) sits at the center of this industry shift. PKI acts as the nucleus of secure communications, authentication, and data protection in IT and OT environments.
Enterprises are deploying more connected devices, applications, and services than ever, adding further complexity to PKI management. Certificate volumes are rising across enterprise networks, cloud stacks, and connected products.
At the same time, certificate lifecycles are shrinking. For example, the CA/Browser Forum aims to reduce public certificate lifetimes from 398 days to 47 days. This vote, originally proposed by tech giant Apple, will directly influence enterprise security practices, even where not strictly mandated.
Shorter certificate lifecycles increase operational strain, amplifying the negative impact of resource and staffing shortages. Moreover, accelerated lifecycles elevate the risk of outages caused by expired certificates.
These failures represent a growing threat vector, particularly for OT security teams. In industrial OT environments, visibility is often limited, and downtime carries significant consequences (e.g., financial loss, fines, reputational damage). Industry leaders such as Palo Alto Networks, Utimaco, and Marvell are clear early movers in offering platformized PKI solutions. However, there is still much room for improvement for the long-tail of smaller security technology providers.
“Teams facing pre-existing resource and staffing constraints are expected to be increasingly inundated with renewed pressures pertaining to PKI and dynamic Certificate Lifecycle Management (CLM),” asserts Dawson. She stresses that this pressure intersects with post-quantum planning.
Now, enterprises must understand not just which cryptographic algorithms to use, but where to deploy them and how quickly they can rotate keys or certificates. Manual cybersecurity processes cannot support this scale of monitoring or responsiveness.
Dawson is also watching the consolidation of disparate security tools. Under this new paradigm, cybersecurity platforms will combine:
“Platformized PKI solutions will begin to dominate, integrating not only CLM but cryptographic asset management, cryptographic posture, and specialized PKI offerings,” says Dawson.
This mirrors broader platformization across the cybersecurity industry, from OT security to network monitoring tools. Security vendors like Entrust, Garantir, and DigiCert already champion the platform-first approach. In 2026, ABI Research forecasts that more vendors will follow suit to simplify enterprise security management.
How the cybersecurity industry should respond:
- Market PKI as an overarching control layer to reduce operational risk and prevent avoidable network breaches.
- Support continuous monitoring, automation, and visibility across IT and OT assets.
- Offer managed services, as enterprises contend with cybersecurity skills gaps and unfamiliarity with cryptographic workloads.
- Direct acquisition strategies and product development toward asset discovery, analytics, and risk management, rather than intermediate upgrades to existing PKI tools.
6. Post-Quantum Cryptography Will Struggle in Government ID Markets
Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) within government-issued and national ID cards will continue to be limited in 2026. This is despite significant PQC adoption across other digital trust domains last year. Behind this trend are unresolved PQC standards, hardware constraints, and ecosystem-wide dependencies that continue to delay meaningful deployment.
First, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has yet to standardize any PQC algorithms for passports. This leaves cybersecurity and smart card vendors in limbo until formal announcements are made.
Another central challenge lies in the technical incompatibility between current PQC algorithms and constrained smart card environments. Larger key sizes and higher computational demands complicate PQC integration in cybersecurity applications where fast and reliable verification is essential (e.g., border control).
Dawson mentions, “Given the larger key size and increased computational demands of PQC, these algorithms are inherently incompatible with the memory-constrained nature of national ID cards and ePassports, complicating integration in a way that balances high cryptographic security with efficiency and speed of verification.”
A third challenge is protecting quantum-safe ID cards from physical cyberattacks. Side-channel attacks and fault injection require robust countermeasures. However, masking techniques for lattice-based PQC require more memory and processing resources than traditional National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) algorithms.
“With lattice-based PQC, larger secrets require an increased number of shares to attain the same level of security, putting further pressure on the already memory-constrained smart card environment,” according to Dawson.
Compounding these challenges are interoperability obstacles and limited Over-the-Air (OTA) update capability. “Without vertical-specific mandates dictating which algorithms to integrate, quantum readiness is not expected until post-2026.”
According to ABI Research, PQC-only passports won’t hit the 1% passport penetration rate until 2030. Hybrid (classic and PQC algorithms) will be the default option for government agencies.
How the cybersecurity industry should respond:
- Align product roadmaps with ICAO standards timelines to avoid premature PQC deployments.
- Prioritize high security applications with minimal interoperability demands.
- Focus on incremental development and diversifying avenues for revenue.
- Establish visibility and brand authority as early as possible.
7. Security-by-Design Will Gain Traction
Another trend to watch in 2026 is the shift from voluntary best practices to enforceable security-by-design requirements. The European Union Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) represents a structural change in how embedded security is treated across IT and OT products entering the European market.
Menting points out that, “Security by design will push embedded security market demand into overdrive with CRA compliance deadlines. As of September 2026, manufacturers will have to start vulnerability reporting under the European Union Cyber Resilience Act, with the full set of obligations applying by the end of 2027.”
This timeline makes 2026 the inflection year for embedded technology providers to operationalize CRA compliance. ABI Research predicts a substantial increase in the adoption of cybersecurity solutions across risk assessment, threat modeling, vulnerability management, and technical documentation.
Security principles, such as Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), shift from merely product development considerations to sweeping mandates. Failure to comply introduces direct commercial consequences. Products that do not meet CRA requirements will be barred from sale within the EU, increasing supply chain risk and forcing organizations to reassess product roadmaps and security architectures.
Embedded security-by-design is, therefore, no longer an optional differentiator. It is a prerequisite for participation in one of the world’s largest technology markets.
How the cybersecurity industry should respond:
- Map cybersecurity offerings directly to CRA compliance workflows.
- Provide tools that simplify SBOM generation, vulnerability reporting, and monitoring.
- Concentrate messaging strategies around reduced compliance risk, as opposed to feature depth.
8. Biometric Payment Cards Will Exit the Mass Market
Sealy tells us that “The year 2026 will mark the final hooray for the biometric payment card.” Biometric payment cards once promised stronger protection against fraud, but adoption has been limited.
Zwipe’s bankruptcy filing in early 2025 highlights the challenges of commercializing biometric payment cards. High unit costs and complex enrollment processes have limited their ability to scale globally. Additionally, most banking customers outside premium segments remain unwilling to pay for the added security and convenience.
As a result, many cybersecurity vendors are shifting their messaging away from mass adoption (of biometrics) and toward showcasing technological capability instead.
Sealy concludes, “In 2026, we will continue to see a handful of biometric payment card demos, but there will likely be a notable shift from prior messaging. Rather than being viewed as a next-generation innovative card technology for the masses, it will act as a vendor showcase, used as an example of technological capabilities and leadership.”
This repositioning reflects broader changes in payment security, where software-based authentication and behavioral monitoring play a larger role in threat detection.
How the cybersecurity industry should respond:
- Deprioritize biometric payment cards as a potentially mass market product.
- Rebrand biometrics as a supplement to access control, authentication, and secure storage.
9. GNSS Security Vulnerabilities Will Persist
ABI Research expects Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) vulnerabilities to remain a significant security threat across civilian and critical infrastructure environments in 2026. Despite technological advancements, “GNSS will not be immune to interference, jamming, and spoofing, even with authentication protocols and anti-jam defenses in place,” says Senior Research Director Andrew Zignani.
He emphasizes how recent conflicts have demonstrated the potential for threat actors to hack GNSS systems. “Geopolitical conflict zones such as the Ukraine-Russia war and ongoing tensions in the Middle East have experienced numerous attacks and disruptions targeting their GNSS.”
Meanwhile, commercial sectors such as aviation and maritime have experienced operational impacts that affect safety, efficiency, and supply chains.
In 2Q 2025 alone, more than 10,000 vessels experienced GNSS interference. Organizations operating in Eastern Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Middle East are the most at risk of GNSS attacks. Ships crossing the busy Sea of Hormuz, for instance, would be prime targets of GNSS jamming.
Single-source positioning elevates cyber risks as reliance on GNSS expands across aviation, maritime, autonomous systems, and robotics. Zignani suggests that “Critical sectors that rely heavily on GNSS will require multi-layered protection through sensor fusion, terrestrial backups, and alternative PNT solutions.” He closes by saying, “In 2026, (GNSS) resilience will not come from eliminating these threats entirely, but from building systems that can withstand spoofing or interference attacks effectively.”
How the cybersecurity industry should respond:
- Treat GNSS disruption as a baseline threat as malicious actors leverage advanced attack methods.
- Emphasize resilience through sensor fusion, redundancy, and alternative positioning.
- Prioritize operational continuity in marketing outreach, rather than absolute threat prevention.
Collaboration Is Key to Cyber Resiliency
The cybersecurity industry is rapidly evolving in 2026. New technology solutions are being introduced, others are in development, and the rest are being discarded. ABI Research’s trend analysis illustrates an industry ripe for increased collaboration. Best-in-class security vendors must continue to innovate as Q-Day gradually approaches. In coordination with CISOs, standardization bodies, and policymakers, a safer digital world can be achieved.
Download ABI Research’s 62 Technology Trends That Will—and Won't—Shape 2026 whitepaper for an expert-based analysis of which innovations, investments, and strategies the cybersecurity industry should prioritize this year.
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