Here are four cyber predictions and preemptive fixes suggested by a cyber resilience firm for the year aheads.
As AI-powered threats evolve rapidly in 2026, Arvind Nithrakashyap, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Rubrik, has outlined his firm’s predictions of critical shifts in cybersecurity priorities.
Organizations will continue to face accelerated attacks exploiting expanded digital surfaces, demanding an “assume breach” mindset focused on data integrity and swift recovery from verified clean states.
Robust recovery mechanisms, including isolated environments, emerge as essential to counter AI-generated malware and vulnerabilities. Nithrakashyap predicts a mandate for unified control planes integrating identity and data protection across environments. These forward-looking insights reveal how 2026’s cyber landscape demands proactive adaptation…
Four cyber predictions for 2026
- Recovery and Resilience: Addressing the dual challenge of AI-driven attacks and expanded digital surfaces
AI significantly accelerates the pace of attacks and expands the attack surface that malicious actors leverage. There will be increased urgency for CISOs to adopt an “assume breach” mindset and prioritize ensuring data integrity and recovery.
When an attack occurs, the time to get a business up and running is critical. In 2026, organizations will emphasize data integrity and rapid recovery to a verified, clean point.
AI tools can rapidly generate malware and exploit known vulnerabilities. Organizations will therefore need to pivot to recovery strategies that utilize integrity validation and isolated, air-gapped recovery environments. Such strategies help ensure the restored environment is free of malicious code, making robust recovery capabilities essential. - Identity security: Identity-based attacks will dominate CISO investments
The scale of non-human identities in the AI era will become a critical vulnerability. Attackers will continue exploiting non-human credentials: in 2026, they will achieve more frequent full-system compromises. Identity infrastructure will become as critical as the data it protects. - The proliferation of AI agents is, and will continue creating, AI sprawl, forcing IT and security teams to reconcile rapid deployment with system control. This dynamic will drive governance improvements in 2026 and focused investment to bring agents into production safely and at scale.
- The Convergence Mandate: Multi-cloud chaos will forces unified control
In 2026, organizations will recognize that siloed multi-cloud environments slow cyber recovery. Using multiple native backup tools leads to long restoration times and frequent emergency migrations.
Recovery speed will become a key metric as unified multi-cloud data protection transforms into a core requirement.
Resilient organizations will consolidate control under a unified plane, integrating identity security with data protection across environments.
