The article lays out three main predictions for 2026, centered on an “AI vs. AI” cybersecurity arms race. It argues that attackers will increasingly use AI and autonomous agents to scale common tactics—phishing, deepfakes, and rapid vulnerability discovery/exploitation—while defenders respond by accelerating adoption of AI-enabled security capabilities such as exposure management, detection, and automated response. The author’s core point is that AI will raise both the frequency and technical sophistication of attacks, making it harder for organizations to keep up if they treat AI as optional rather than foundational to modern security operations.

A second theme is that “human-speed” defense will struggle to keep pace: defenders will push toward autonomous containment, probabilistic risk scoring, and AI-assisted rule creation, but they will move more cautiously because defensive automation must be trusted and safe in production—an asymmetry the author believes keeps attackers a step ahead. The most dramatic prediction is “malware autonomy”: self-learning malware or worms that can adapt their behavior to evade detection and change tactics as they encounter defenses. Finally, the article forecasts continued vendor consolidation and “platformization,” where large security platforms buy smaller tools to gather more data and feed AI-driven security features—framing cybersecurity data as a strategic asset that major vendors will increasingly concentrate.

Source: https://www.darkreading.com/cyber-risk/cybersecurity-predictions-2026-an-ai-arms-race-and-malware-autonomy