As we roll toward 2026, we asked a few of Radware’s sharpest minds to weigh in on what’s on the horizon for cybersecurity next year. These are predictions, not guarantees. We don’t have a crystal ball in the office (yet), but when our Threat Intelligence, Product, and Security Evangelist experts all land on similar themes, it’s worth paying attention.
Cybersecurity is shifting fast. AI is no longer the shiny new tool; it’s becoming the battlefield itself. Attackers are adapting. Defenders are adapting. And somewhere in the middle, enterprises, service providers and CISOs are trying to keep the lights on and ship products without everything falling apart.
Here’s what our team believes 2026 has in store for us — explained the way real humans talk about cybersecurity, not the way robots do.
Prediction 1: The Internet of Machines Takes Over
Pascal Geenens, VP of Threat Intelligence, Radware
2026 is the year machines officially start talking to each other more than they talk to us. Human-driven traffic takes a back seat, and machine-to-machine communication becomes the main driver of the internet thanks to AI assistants, autonomous agents and a growing list of acronyms that sound like bands at Coachella (MCP, A2A, AP2 … you get the idea).
APIs become the front line of this new agent economy. Every bot—good or bad—will be hitting APIs nonstop, making them the hottest target on the threat map. And because these agents make decisions for us, attackers will shift their focus to poisoning the underlying data, manipulating context and sneaking into the AI supply chain long before a human ever notices.
If 2025 was the warm-up, 2026 is the moment the machines take the microphone.
Prediction 2: New Tech + New Rules = Big Compliance Headaches
Howard Taylor, CISO, Radware
Remember when “compliance” meant filling out spreadsheets once a year? Cute times.
2026 brings more regulations—DORA, NIS2, the EU AI Act—and every one of them demands more controls, more reporting and more proof that you know what’s happening inside your own network. Organizations that embrace it will earn trust in a security-savvy world. Others will … quietly rethink their business models.
The upside? Companies that build strong cybersecurity and governance programs will have a serious competitive edge. Everyone else will be playing catch-up or playing exit.
Prediction 3: Service Providers Brace for a Zero-Day Storm
Travis Volk, VP Global Technology Solutions & GTM, Carrier, Radware
Exploited vulnerabilities are popping up faster than vendors can patch them, and attackers aren’t slowing down for anyone’s maintenance window.
Service Providers will see a spike in zero-day events and will need in-line protection that operates at runtime, not after the fact. Think of it as moving from “firefighting” to “fire prevention.” If they don’t, the cost hits the bottom line, especially with encrypted workloads being the most expensive assets to protect.
2026 is the year DevSecOps becomes a living, breathing runtime discipline. If you’re only securing at build-time, you’re already behind.
Prediction 4: DDoS Goes Stealth Mode
Eva Abergel, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Radware
DDoS is no longer “noise.” It’s getting sharper, smarter, and harder to spot.
Attackers are using AI to build autonomous botnets that learn in real time. These aren’t the old-school “flood everything and hope something breaks” botnets. These are calculated, stealthy and tuned for bypassing mitigation, especially at Layer 7.
The real threat won’t be size anymore. It’ll be invisibility.
Security teams will need to treat DDoS as a business risk. Because when the application layer slows to a crawl in the middle of your sales cycle, that’s not an IT problem—that’s a revenue problem.
Prediction 5: AI Becomes the Attacker and the Defender
Chip Witt, Principal Security Evangelist, Radware
2026 is the year AI takes its gloves off. Attackers are using generative and autonomous AI to perform
- prompt injection
- synthetic identity abuse
- automated reconnaissance
- business logic manipulation
Defenders will need AI to fight back—real AI, not dashboard glitter. Automated triage. Autonomous decision-making. Real-time mitigation. Human response alone won’t be fast enough.
We’re entering a full-blown AI arms race, and cybersecurity teams will be asked to play both offense and defense, often at the same time.
And yes, it will feel a bit like trying to stop a drone with a butterfly net.
Prediction 6: Social Engineering Gets an AI Makeover
Arik Atar, Senior Researcher, Cyber Threat Intelligence, Radware
If you thought phishing emails were getting good, wait until you hear your “bank representative” call you … and they sound exactly like your mom .
A new underground economy is forming: AI-powered social-engineering-as-a-service attacks. We’re already seeing OTP-bot platforms with automated scripts that spoof caller IDs and play fraudulent voice recordings to trick victims into handing over 2FA codes.
The next step? Personalized AI voicebots that mimic real people—relatives, coworkers, even your boss—to make account takeovers almost effortless.
With 2FA adoption at an all-time high, attackers are simply evolving to get around it. It’s the cat-and-mouse game we wish would end, but probably won’t.
So … What Do You Do With All of This?
These predictions aren’t meant to scare anyone. They’re meant to prepare you.
Every year, cybersecurity becomes more complex, and 2026 is shaping up to be a big transition point from human-centered networks to machine-driven ecosystems. The organizations that invest now in API protection, runtime security, AI-driven defense and stronger identity governance will be the ones that stay ahead of the curve.
And remember: these are predictions, not prophecies. But when our Radware team sees these trends forming, it’s worth taking seriously.
If 2025 was the year AI went mainstream, 2026 is the year we all realize just how much of our digital world is being negotiated, verified and secured by machines—not by us.
Hold onto your coffee. Next year is going to be interesting.
Read more about the future of AI with Pascal Geenen’s report:
Internet of Agents: The Next Threat Surface