As we plunge into the still-uncertain cybersecurity world of 2026, here are some predicted trends I find interesting. Hope you do too!
Predictions are only as useful as users care to prepare for them. Below are some that truly caught my interest, gleaned from two experts and based on their experience and observations of the fraud and threat landscape in 2025.
Trust readers like you will find them useful as you prepare to meet the challenges in the New Year 2026.
According to Shane Buckley, President & CEO, Gigamon, prevention is dead in cybersecurity, and real-time cyber risk assessment will become a board-level mandate driving cyber-insurance.
- Prevention is dead
“By 2026,the myth of prevention as a primary strategy will be fully exposed,” he said. “Attackers are faster, smarter, and more patient than ever, leveraging AI, deepfakes, and malware that can remain undetected for months, bypassing traditional defenses. Many vendors will continue to overemphasize prevention, presenting it as innovation while moving away from detection and response, but this approach is increasingly ineffective.”
Breach rates globally are rising 17% year on year, with 55% of organizations affected in the past 12 months — “a trend that is mirrored in highly connected, digitally advanced hubs like Singapore, which ranks as the third-largest global source of DDoS attack traffic.” Singapore’s dense concentration of data centers and cloud infrastructure is often exploited by overseas threat actors, illustrating how attackers leverage digital complexity to bypass traditional defenses.
“This acceleration makes real-time detection, removal, and complete visibility critical,” Buckley advised. “Organizations that implement continuous risk assessment, monitor third-party ecosystems, and maintain visibility into encrypted traffic, where most threats now hide, will gain a decisive advantage. Aligning AI initiatives with security priorities further ensures defenses keep pace with adversaries. In this landscape, resilience is not about keeping every threat out; it is about seeing, stopping, and learning from threats in real time. Prevention alone is a pipe dream; the companies that survive and thrive will be those that detect and remove threats before damage is done.” - Real-time cyber risk assessment and cyber-insurance
As adversaries continue to outpace traditional defenses, fueled by AI and increasingly sophisticated tactics, organizations will no longer be able to rely on periodic or reactive risk assessments, and real-time risk assessment will become a board-level mandate. Buckley added: “At the same time, cyber-insurers will tie premiums and coverage to these practices, rewarding organizations that demonstrate continuous monitoring and penalizing those that lack complete visibility. Real-time risk assessment powered by deep observability will become both a governance requirement and a financial lever, ensuring organizations detect and respond to threats before they escalate.”
Next, let’s look at the fraud landscape. “Looking at 2026, the fraud landscape in Asia will look different, and businesses have to advance its defenses as three forces converge to fundamentally shift the fraud battleground. Speed, AI, and interconnection are being used as attack vectors,” said Thanh Tai Vo, APAC Director of Fraud and Identity, LexisNexis Risk Solutions.
The 3 forces he foresees will converge are:
- The digital dominance lock-in
“Card-not-present and wallet fraud now account for ~45% of APAC fraud losses in 2025, driven by e-commerce, super-app integration into daily life and mobile wallet adoption. India’s UPI is tracking toward 15 billion monthly transactions in 2026, with social engineering scams already extracting US$1.7B annually. China’s digital yuan has crossed US$7.3T in cumulative transaction volume, creating attack surfaces measured not in millions of users but in populations. Payment infrastructure serving a billion users with little friction has become a lucrative target for fraudsters.” - Industrialization of deception
“Generative AI now powers deepfake IDs and synthetic identities, challenging KYC and liveness checks across Asia’s digital onboarding flows. Static document checks and basic liveness detection will face systematic compromise. Simultaneously, mules increasingly launder funds through crypto exchanges and gaming platforms in Hong Kong and Singapore; one recent crackdown dismantled a ring moving HK$118M via 500+ mule accounts. Traditional AML built for bank-centric flows will be outmaneuvered by infrastructure designed for digital-native laundering. Financial institutions should shift from static verification to continuous behavioral monitoring and real-time anomaly detection.” - Cross-border corridors raise complexity
Vo warns: “Singapore’s real-time payment linkages with Thailand, India, and Malaysia expand convenience and risk. At the moment, some progress on intelligence sharing and defense systems is being made on coordination, but it remains fragmented and far slower than the rate at which new corridors are opening.”
