The topic on everybody’s lips is the critical juncture where AI meets security. This is a two-way street. On the one hand, AI in the hands of the bad guys is adding to the speed and intensity of attacks. On the plus side, it is boosting the efficiency of defences and safeguarding the digital economy.

What every attendee is agreeing on is that the centre of gravity has shifted from experimentation and proof of concept to the adoption at increasing scale of autonomous AI agents that can hunt out network breaches with no human involvement, and in many cases deal with them in real time. Basic threat detection was yesterday’s story, while today is all about agentic AI that delivers proactive, predictive security, a trend that is termed ‘shifting left’ if you are part of the developer community.

AI also has a key role in fighting back against a silent new menace, the so-called ‘espionage ecosystem’. These complex organisations are commonly sponsored by an autocratic nation-state, and work by deploying a range of sophisticated technologies with aims that range from disrupting supply chains and stealing information to undermining the security of critical national infrastructure. They demand that the CISO identify data authorisation boundaries, and understand how data is flowing inside the organisation. The advent of AI means they can enhance and automate some of that job.

AI is proving adept at testing for vulnerabilities across the ICT ecosystem. Commonly deployed to support rather than to replace the efforts of human experts, it is a useful weapon when it comes to finding weaknesses that old school methods might miss. But it is now clear that the kind of language models that power most AI use cases are not so effective at dealing with security risks, and that’s because cyber threats don’t conveniently come out of the typical datasets that LLMs are trained on. The answer lies in developing models that are trained using Reinforcement Learning (RL) rather than standard autocomplete capabilities and static datasets. RL, a useful tool for crowdsourced testing specialists like Bugcrowd, acts as a training gym for AI models.

Other innovators include X-BOW and its autonomous pentester technology, designed to defeat the bad guys before they strike and using AI to revolutionize how offensive security is approached. Terra Security’s novel approach to pentesting extends across web, AI, internal apps, API, mobile, network and cloud.

The dynamic world of cyber threats and counter measures ensures that every RSA event is unique, with attendance a must for anybody in the protection game.

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Not least of these has been the surge in Agentic AI use cases, in other words the use of AI that can plan and execute complex tasks without human involvement.

The past 12 months have also seen AI became a crucial weapon on the cybersecurity frontier, helping to identify and stop cyber threats.

But we have also seen a widening divide in AI adoption, with a relative handful of organisations emerging as AI leaders — scaling AI adoption, modernizing infrastructure, and embedding AI into their core business strategy.

On the security front line, cyberthreats have evolved in new and alarming ways. From Qantas Airways to Jaguar Land Rover, major organisations around the world have contended with major outages.

Nation state threats have ballooned. In June, US authorities urgently warned companies to prepare for Iranian cyberattacks. The ongoing Russia Ukraine war has seen sophisticated cyber disruption at massive scale with destructive consequences. Critical infrastructure remains a soft cyber target as demonstrated by recent attacks on several European airports.

On a more positive note, 2025 also saw the consolidation of energy-efficient computing with many organisations now choosing to deploy architecture, code and hardware that is optimized for efficiency, as well as move towards renewable energy to run systems. We have also seen a rise in human-machine synergy, and initiatives to bring together the physical and digital worlds.

Onwards and upwards

So, on the brink of 2026, what tech sector developments await? Here are five of my predictions for the coming 12 months:

• The continued impact of AI will see organizations seek new methods for verifying the authenticity of information. As Dave Gerry, CEO of crowdsourced security provider Bugcrowd, puts it: “In 2026, security teams will face a culture and mindset shift: determining what to trust, what to validate, and how to respond responsibly to AI-driven outputs. As defenders, we must embrace people-centric security.”
• Influential VC firm Andreessen Horowitz has indicated that it expects next year’s focus to be on the transformative power of artificial intelligence and will see the emergence of specialized applications that deliver greater and greater value as AI capabilities improve.
• 2026 will also be the year of convergence as CIOs and CISOs try to manage the three-way challenge of integrating AI, networking and security.
• Despite some predicting that 2026 will see AI momentum start to slow, there are also signs of further growth and evolution. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has recently announced strong sales forecasts, indicating good growth prospects. The company’s strategic investments include a $10 billion deal with OpenAI and a $5 billion partnership with Intel. But it will probably have to deal with greater competition from major rivals.
• Although somewhat overshadowed by AI, quantum computing will see further progress next year on its journey from the theoretical to the practical, revolutionising sectors like logistics and R&D. Quantum Computing-as-a-Service (QaaS) will make the technology accessible to a wider range of businesses.

I would like to extend this conversation to tech sector stakeholders with strong views on what the future holds for us all. They are invited to submit their own ‘Top 5 2026 predictions’ to Zonic at:

rrudyard@zonicgroup.com

We will share the best of these predictions with our media and analyst connections across the globe, covering North America, APAC. EMEA and LATAM so they may consider for their own 2026 predictions, and cast their votes on these submissions during the holiday season. We will announce a league table of top predictions during early January. The deadline for final submissions is Dec 23.

We look forward to receiving your 2026 predictions!

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