As we move into 2026, one theme cuts through every corner of the cybersecurity landscape: AI isn’t just accelerating change. It’s completely redefining the rules. From widening economic divides and reshaping talent pipelines, to brand trust and attacker capability, this coming year will force security and business leaders to fundamentally rethink what resilience means.
At Cobalt, our executive team has a front-row seat to this transformation. Here’s how we see the next twelve months unfolding, through the perspectives of our CEO, CMO, CTO, CISO, and VP of Product.
Prediction 1: The Security Poverty Line Widens, And AI Pushes Both Sides of It
Sonali Shah, CEO
“By 2026, more organizations will fall below the security poverty line, with AI acting as both the cause and the catalyst. AI is lowering the barrier for attackers while raising the cost of basic defense, shifting what a true security baseline requires.
Large enterprises will invest in AI tools and specialized talent to stay above the line, while SMBs facing flat budgets will struggle to keep pace. The gap between those who can afford resilience and those who cannot will widen.”
Prediction 2: Brand Trust and Cybersecurity Become Indivisible
Lisa Matherly, CMO
"In 2026, brand trust and cybersecurity will become inseparable. As AI accelerates across marketing, every new integration—from content tools to CRMs—expands both capability and risk. Our digital supply chains are now part of our brand story, and customers are paying attention to how securely that story is built.
The CMOs who lead with security in mind won’t just avoid breaches — they’ll earn loyalty. By working hand-in-hand with CISOs and security teams, marketing leaders can ensure the technology we adopt is not only innovative but resilient. This convergence of AI, marketing, and cybersecurity marks a shift in responsibility: protecting the brand now means protecting the tech stack."
Prediction 3: Bug Bounty Faces a Market Correction.
Gunter Ollmann, CTO
"The bug bounty model will face a market correction in 2026 as the flood of AI-enabled fuzzing submissions completely overwhelms triage teams and exposes the fundamental flaws of a volume-over-quality philosophy. We predict a major vendor-side revolt against the high overhead and low signal of managed bug bounty services.
The future of finding true, high-impact vulnerabilities lies in integrated AI-Pentesting solutions that augment—rather than replace—the strategic, human-led validation required to deliver contextualized, exploitable findings.”
Prediction 4: Offensive AI Matures, And CISOs Will Need New Playbooks
Andrew Obadiaru, CISO
"While the security community fixates on defensive AI, 2026 will be the year when cybercriminals achieve true operational AI maturity. We will see a dramatic increase in complex, unimaginable attack vectors as sophisticated, hyper-personalized campaigns become easily accessible to a wider pool of malicious actors.
This rise in offensive AI will force CISOs to abandon reactive defenses and mandate a continuous, proactive pentesting posture to survive."
Prediction 5: The AI Fluency Gap: Why Cybersecurity’s Talent Shortage Is Being Redefined
Deepak Dalvi, VP of Product
"The cybersecurity talent gap won’t be defined by a lack of people, but by a lack of AI-fluent people. For years, the industry has focused on filling entry-level roles like SOC and analysts, for example. Now, AI is automating much of that foundational work. The result isn’t a closed gap, it’s a new one.
The organizations that win in 2026 won’t just hire more people, they’ll hire the right people with AI expertise to co-exist and speed up continuous discovery, validation and resolution by combining human intuition with machine precision. The next generation of security talent won’t just fight threats; they’ll train and collaborate with the AI powered systems and agentic AI workflows that scale to improve effectiveness and spread across continuously evolving threat landscape."
The Common Thread: 2026 Requires a New Security Operating Model
Across every executive perspective, one truth is clear: AI isn’t just changing threats. It's changing the economics, responsibilities, and talent structures of cybersecurity itself.
Organizations that thrive will be those that treat offensive security as continuous rather than periodic, elevate security as a brand and business priority, and invest in developing AI-fluent teams. They’ll pair automation with human expertise, extend visibility across digital supply chains, and rethink resilience as an ongoing practice, not a compliance project.
The attack surface is evolving. The threats are accelerating. The talent model is shifting. The question for 2026 isn’t whether change is coming, it’s whether your security program is evolving fast enough to meet it.
