Cybersecurity 2026: AI is no longer the tool, it is the attacker

An employee opens an email. Nothing suspicious: it comes from the CEO, with their voice, their writing style, and it even responds in real time. It asks to approve an urgent transfer. They do it. They have just handed over €200,000 to an AI system that cloned their boss in seconds.

This is not science fiction. Vishing (voice phishing) attacks using deepfakes increased by more than 1,600% in the first quarter of 2025, according to industry data. And this is just a taste of what is to come.

By 2026, 50% of cyberattacks will be driven by AI. Not as an auxiliary tool: AI will be the attacker. Autonomous systems capable of analyzing your defenses, modifying their strategy in real time, and learning from every failed attempt. Palo Alto Networks calls them “threats that are different in essence, not just in degree.”

Is your company prepared to defend itself against something that thinks faster than your security team?

Agentic AI: The attacker that never sleeps

Agentic AI refers to systems that perceive, reason, decide, and act without human supervision. Unlike traditional malware that follows fixed instructions, these agents make decisions on the fly.

Imagine a thief who, while trying to open your door, analyzes the lock, tries different keys, learns from each failure, and if it doesn’t work, looks for a window—all in milliseconds. That is an attack with agentic AI.

Google documented the first large-scale cyberattack executed with minimal human supervision in September 2025. The problem is not just the speed (100 times faster than a human hacker). It is that after the attack, you cannot trace what happened: you know your data was stolen, but not which agent moved it, where to, or why.

Forrester predicts that in 2026 we will see the first public breach caused by agentic AI resulting in mass layoffs. When a compromised agent has access to your APIs and critical systems, a simple prompt injection (manipulating the instructions the AI receives) can turn it into the most dangerous insider in your organization.

Your digital identity no longer belongs to you

75% of current breaches do not use malware. Attackers simply log in with valid credentials, according to CrowdStrike. They don’t force the door: they have the key.

How do they get it? This is where generative AI changes the rules:

CEO doppelgänger: A perfect AI-generated replica of your CEO that can give orders in real time via video call.
Token replay: Stealing and reusing the “session keys” that keep you logged into your applications.
Machine impersonation: Palo Alto Networks reports that machine identities (APIs, bots, automated services) already outnumber human employees 82 to 1. Each one is a potential entry point.

The traditional perimeter is irrelevant when the attacker has your face, your voice, and your credentials.

Shadow AI: The threat that is already inside

Your marketing team uses ChatGPT to write emails. Sales has an AI bot to qualify leads. Finance is testing predictive analysis tools. Does IT know? Probably not.

Shadow AI (unapproved AI tools used by your employees) replicates the Shadow IT crisis of a decade ago, but with much higher stakes. These tools handle confidential data, proprietary algorithms, and strategic decisions.

IBM predicts significant incidents in 2026 where intellectual property will be compromised through Shadow AI. A single unsupervised model can trigger massive exposures.

The numbers are concerning:

79% of organizations already use or plan to use agentic AI this year.
65% admit that their use of AI exceeds their understanding of the technology.
Only 44% have a corporate AI policy.
Barely 45% perform regular AI risk assessments.

This gap between adoption and governance is exactly the fertile ground that attackers need.

Autonomous Ransomware: Extortion at machine speed

Ransomware is no longer just about encrypting your files and demanding a ransom. Now it combines data theft, deepfake blackmail, and operational paralysis, all executed by AI.

In controlled tests, agentic AI ransomware managed to steal all of an organization’s data 100 times faster than human attackers. By the time your team receives the alert, it is already over.

The frequency is also scaling: from one attack every 11 seconds in 2020, we will move to one every 2 seconds by 2031. Software supply chain attacks doubled in early 2025, and Trend Micro predicts that 2026 will bring incidents that disrupt global logistics and high-tech chains.

Data Poisoning: Corrupting AI from within

Here comes a threat that few are seeing: data poisoning. Attackers don’t steal your data; they corrupt it. They manipulate the information that feeds your AI models to create invisible backdoors.

Your security team checks the infrastructure: secure servers, active firewall, everything correct. But the attack is embedded in the very data that trains your AI. The problem is structural: those who understand the data (data scientists, developers) and those who secure the infrastructure (the CISO team) work in separate worlds.

Tools like DSPM (Data Security Posture Management) and AI-SPM exist today, but in 2026 they will be mandatory.

The Quantum Countdown

Quantum computers capable of breaking current encryption are 10–20 years away. But the attack has already begun.

It is called “harvest now, decrypt later”: attackers collect your encrypted data today, knowing they will be able to decrypt it when quantum computing matures. Security Magazine predicts a drastic increase in quantum security spending as migration deadlines approach.

IBM’s roadmap shows processors scaling from the current 433 qubits to over 1,000 by 2026, with a more than 50% probability of breaking RSA-2048 by 2035. If you handle data that will still be sensitive in 10 years, the time to act is now.

𝗕𝘂𝘁 𝗔𝗜 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗹𝘀𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗲

It is not all alarmism. Technical initiatives focused on autonomous defensive cybersecurity agents already exist. One example is Cybersecurity AI (CAI), an open project developed in Spain by Alias Robotics that works on AI risk assessment and advanced security agents (https://github.com/aliasrobotics/cai).

Their work on cybersecurity agents (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.02654) shifts the debate from alarmism to reproducible engineering. This is the type of initiative we need: open, evaluable, and scientific defenses.

What to do this week

The landscape is complex, but paralysis is not an option. Start with this:

Audit your Shadow AI. This week, ask each department which AI tools they are using. No judging, no banning yet. You just need visibility. 65% of companies do not know what AI their employees use; that blindness is your greatest vulnerability.

Once you have the map, we can talk about governance, identities, and security platforms. But first: know what you have.

Do you need help auditing AI use in your company? At Montevive.AI, we perform Shadow AI assessments and design governance policies adapted to your sector. Write to us and we will tell you how to get started.

Sources consulted:

Cybersecurity 2026: AI is no longer the tool, it is the attacker