By Alex Woodward – Senior Vice President - Consulting Delivery, Cyber Security, CGI in the UK & Australia
As we enter 2026, cyber security is undergoing a fundamental transformation from technical IT function to critical business imperative. Organisations that fail to recognise this shift risk breaches, regulatory penalties and lost stakeholder confidence.
The incoming Cyber Security and Resilience Bill marks a watershed moment for UK organisations. For Operators of Essential Services, cyber readiness is becoming legally enforceable. Organisations must evidence tested disaster recovery, maintain oversight of suppliers and report clearly on risk and supply-chain dependencies.
After years of experimentation, 2026 represents a maturation point for AI in security operations. Organisations now demand tangible returns on their AI investments. The focus is sharpening toward targeted use cases including alert correlation, dependency scanning, and automated response workflowswhile less defined AI experiments face rigorous cost-benefit scrutiny.
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This pragmatic approach reflects an industry shift from Tactical AI as a buzzword to business utility. AI will continue transforming security operations, but only where it demonstrably improves outcomes. This will result in greater scrutiny on cost vs benefit, especially as compute and licensing costs riseand a shift toward efficient, outcome-driven AI adoption, rather than broad experimentation.
The threat landscape will continue to evolve. Adversaries are leveraging AI to enhance phishing campaigns, create convincing deepfakes, and orchestrate complex supply-chain attacks. Prompt injection attacks against AI systems are rapidly rising, exposing vulnerabilities in hastily deployed systems.
This arms race demands that defensive tooling evolve accordingly. Context-aware threat detection, real-time dependency evaluation, and behaviour-driven monitoring are becoming essential. Security teams must also manage increased variability as AI lowers the barrier to development, demanding robust code review and governance mechanisms.
Due to increasing interconnectivity, supply-chain risk will becomeproactivelyquantified, not just assessed.Organisations will begin shifting from questionnaire-based supplier assessments to data-driven, continuous monitoring. Supplier risk scorecards and real-time visibility tools will increasingly be used to manage exposure. The focus will be on modelling and minimising risk through data-informed decisions, rather than attempting to eliminate supplier dependencies.
Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) is moving from theory to practice. Early-adopter industries including Finance, Defence, and Telecommunications are beginning full-scale PQC migrations. Integration complexity, especially across legacy infrastructure, will emerge as the challenge. Planning for PQC will become a critical strategic project.Organisations that delay PQC planning risk finding themselves unprepared when quantum computing capabilities advance.
Vulnerability management will become continuous, automatedand board-visible as traditional patch cycles and ad-hoc assessments will no longer be deemed sufficient. As such continuous scanning and AI-led prioritisation of vulnerabilities will replace monthly patching and reporting methods.There will also be increasedautomated regression testing and remediation orchestration to be used to reduce manual overheads.Dashboards will summarise technical exposure and business risk, bridging the gap between security teams and executive leadershipthat boards can understand and act upon
For boardrooms, the message is clear: cyber security must be treated as a strategic business enabler, and no longer a back-office concern. This requires demanding evidence of resilience rather than compliance paperworkand check box exercises. Organisations at the most senior level must ensure budgets reflect actual risk including supply-chain dependencies, AI deployment costs, and PQC migration. It will become incumbent to embed security thinking into all aspects of operations, from procurement, to development, to third-party management.Ultimately senior leaders must accept that cyber resilience is an ongoing endeavor, not a one-off effortand plan accordingly.
The path forward in 2026 is one of intentionality and integration. By combining targeted AI adoption, continuous risk visibility, regulatory compliance, and strategic planning, organisations can build defences as dynamic as the threats they face.
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