The Cyber Crisis: Understanding the Current Cybersecurity Landscape (and How to Be Proactive About It) in 2026 and Beyond

Businesses, professionals, and even the average Joe are all at significant risk due to the rise of AI-powered cyber threats. AI in cybercrime means that even less talented criminals can carry out sophisticated attacks, but that’s not the only AI-related crime businesses like yours need to watch out for. 

Increasingly, small businesses and upstart developers are relying on AI-generated code to create digital products, often without a firm understanding of the required security network to protect them from threats. 

There’s also the growing trend of deepfakes and generative AI being used to conduct everything from sophisticated attacks to enhancing regular phishing scams. 

In short, if you aren’t proactively working to protect your business around the clock, you are at risk. Proactivity is essential in 2026 and beyond, because bolstering your defences is no longer enough.

The State of Cybercrime in 2026 

Cybercrime is only becoming more sophisticated, but it isn’t all doom and gloom. Though in the United States the average cost of a data breach soared to $10.22 million, the global cost has actually dropped to an estimated $4.44 million, marking the first time the global cybercrime breach cost has fallen in the last five years. 

Breach lifecycles have also hit a record low, now taking 17 days less than previously. 

Arguably, the most significant gap between those who have managed to protect their systems and those who have been breached is between those who have established AI oversight, rather than solely focusing on AI adoption. For example, 63% of breached organizations stated they don’t currently have an AI governance policy, or are still developing one. Even companies that do have a current governance policy in place aren’t doing all they can, either, with only 34% of them stating they regularly conduct audits to hunt down and find unsanctioned AI activity. 

Shadow AI is also another weak point, with businesses employing shadow AI (AI that users are unaware of, for whatever reason) seeing an average loss increase of $670,000 per breach. 

Changing Cybercrime Trends You Need to Know 

The face of cybercrime is also changing. Just as 2020 saw the rise in popularity of ransomware over other types of attacks, today, fraud has overtaken the number one risk. Deepfakes and genAI have led to fraud impacting 73% of polled businesses in a World Economic Forum report, making it a top threat to be aware of in 2026. 

AI-related leaks are also a rising threat, with around 34% of data leaks attributed to GenAI as opposed to adversarial AI capabilities (which sit around 29%). 

There’s also an increase in geopolitically motivated attacks, further complicating supply lines and national infrastructure. 

How to Protect Your Business from Cyber Attacks in 2026 

The best ways to protect your business from cyber attacks in 2026 are to be proactive, lock down access points, and clean up data and AI governance, to name a few. While some options in this list will sound very familiar, others may be new, so sit back and discover exactly how you can better protect your business from a cyber attack in 2026:  

Be Proactive: The Role of Threat Hunting in Cybersecurity 

Threat hunting is the go-to, proactive approach to help you identify suspicious or malicious actors and activities, particularly those who have circumvented security systems like your firewall or even your intrusion detection system. 

There are so many ways your system could be breached, and then data leaked without your knowledge. If a hacker gets into your accounts, for example, they could set new parameters, like auto-forwarding emails to their own accounts, hiding inbound security email updates, and more. 

By using advanced threat hunting techniques like the Sqrrl Threat Hunting Reference Model or the Targeted Hunting Integrated Threat Intelligence (TaHiTI), as well as tools that range from SEIM, EDR, MDR, and other security monitoring tools like user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA), to hunt down weakpoints and potential threats. 

It’s combined with threat intelligence, which serves as the analytics behind the threat-hunting driver. 

Regardless of which approach you take or the steps you onboard onto your security workflows, one thing remains certain: threat hunting is your next best friend in cybersecurity. 

Enhance User Access Protection 

No matter how advanced both cybersecurity and cybercrime become, one of the most prevailing causes (and this is true way back in 2005, as outlined in Gartner’s very first cybercrime report) is that users are your greatest weakpoints. 

In 2005, the majority of threats came from stolen devices. Today, login credentials can pose an equally devastating risk to your business. 

That’s why, if you haven’t already, it’s time to: 

Enforce Strict User Login Details 

Every user should have a unique login identity. This means username and password should, ideally, not be used anywhere else online. The password should not follow any rules (like surname, date of birth) and should be completely randomized. 

Set Up 2FA 

Every login should require two-factor authentication. This way, even if the login details are accessed, the hacker will need a secondary, physical device in order to carry on further. The login attempt will also be logged, allowing you to determine whether there was a related data breach. 

Lock Down User Access

The most critical element of enhancing user access protection is to lock down user access. No employee should have access to all your company’s data. For high-level, C-suite executives, silo data is behind multiple logins. This way, even if one account is hacked, your entire dataset won’t be up for grabs. 

Shine a Light on Shadow IT 

Every shadow system, AI, or byte of data needs to be uncovered, understood, and either put to better use or outright removed from your system. Shadow AI is a massive threat, but so too is shadow data. The only way you can adequately protect your system is if you are fully aware of where every dataset, software, or system is, and can guarantee that the subject in question is positively contributing to your bottom line. 

Train Everyone 

Every single person in your business, including those who may only provide support (including your janitorial staff, for example), needs to be refreshed regularly on how to stay safe online. 

Connecting to a public WiFi, for example, can mean criminals intercepting the data you both send and receive. Criminals could also steal login credentials or download enough data on you to start impersonating you. 

Even WiFi networks from seemingly trustworthy sources, like a big-name café brand, can be spoofed. For example, you connect to Starbucks_WiFi instead of Starbucks-WiFi. What’s the difference between the two? One is the company’s official free WiFi, the other is a malicious hotspot controlled by a criminal. 

While endpoint protection can help you avoid viruses and other hacking attempts that start outside your office, it isn’t perfect. You need to regularly train and remind your entire staff on how to stay safe online, so that the number of threats coming your way is reduced from the outset. 

Use AI to Detect Suspicious Activity 

One of the more powerful ways to deploy AI to protect your business is to use it to monitor activity 24/7. Not only can AI systems (those specifically developed for this purpose, like Network Security monitoring or security information and event management) be used to help collect a baseline of activity for every user, but they can also immediately detect anomalous activity because of it. This anomalous activity, ranging from an unfamiliar login to strange user behavior, will then be flagged and sent for review, allowing you to detect cybercriminals all the way to malicious AI agents. 

Create Comprehensive Chain of Command Protocols 

The rise of deepfakes and genAI means that hackers are better at impersonating others than ever before. They can use AI to analyze a person’s speech behavior, copy their voice, and create a deepfake to create an entirely spoofed Skype or Zoom call to trick an employee into making a devastating transfer, for example. 

Worse, is that those deepfake technologies will only improve. While yes, we can hope that detection software will become better at automatically determining whether a deepfake is real or not, that isn’t the current reality. It’s also not something that’s on most people’s radars. 

An employee on a Zoom call with people they are familiar with, who sound like themselves, is a recipe for disaster. The quality of an average Zoom call, especially a conference call, also makes it harder to determine whether a real person is on the other end. 

That’s why you need sophisticated chain-of-command protocols in place. For example, large transfers over a certain amount must be signed off in person, or a code word needs to be given to verify a manager’s identity before any action can be taken. 

Key Takeaways 

Cybercrime is ever-evolving. That’s why businesses frequently need to stay on top of trends and work to patch weakpoints in their own operations. In 2026, however, you also need to be proactive and hunt down threats before they can cause a breach.