Illuminating 2026: The Cyber Threats and Trends Shaping Tomorrow’s Workforce 

2025 was a pivotal year in cybersecurity, marked by the rapid, often chaotic, integration of AI into both modern enterprise workflows and the threat landscape. As we look ahead to 2026, the convergence of expanding workforces, unchecked Shadow AI adoption, and highly sophisticated identity-based attacks suggests that established security models are no longer sufficient.

Fortunately, Neon Cyber emerged from stealth this past year to illuminate the vast amount of touchpoints their users and data have through the new age of the Web. Cody Pierce, Co-Founder and CEO and Mark St. John, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer, offer a dedicated solution to these threats, providing a crucial perspective on what lies on the horizon.

As we edge into 2026, it’s time to let these experts dust off their velvet cloaks and gather around their cyber crystal balls to help us prepare for the foreseen challenges ahead.

Cody’s Browser Breakdowns

Shadow AI will Explode

Discussing yet another Shadow category is tiring, but business-wide LLM adoption is creating a critical visibility gap. By 2026, exponentially more companies will use chatbots and agents to support staff. This leaves security teams with almost no observability, especially when using browser-based tools. Security teams must urgently focus on Shadow-AI discovery, control, and response to remain vigilant next year.

AI Browsers will be a Security Nightmare

The largest providers of LLMs are moving their data mining to the browser to push their products deeper into business operations. Done under the auspice of automation, browsers from Perplexity and OpenAI will be a disaster for security and privacy. These Chromium-based browsers have zero regard for security operations and will continue to be used by departments like the Wild West. Pause any consideration of enterprise deployment of these browsers until security teams can develop the proper observability, policies, and playbooks.

Phishing and Identity Attacks will Continue to Dominate Initial Access

Attackers have developed sophisticated techniques and campaigns that target credentials, providing them with easier initial access than dropping malware while also bypassing perimeter-based security controls. This directly coincides with the continued adoption of SaaS and cloud identity access and management, making identity and business email compromise attractive to attackers. In 2026, start rethinking your detection and response to include browser and SaaS identity discovery and improve phishing prevention beyond email-based solutions

Mark’s Workforce Woes

The Workforce Attack Surface will Continue to Expand

Attack surface management is the discovery of exposed assets repeatedly. The original focus was on infrastructure and services; however, there needs to be an immediate focus on identities and user assets, both hardware and software. In 2025, identity was the most leveraged compromise vector. 2026 will be the year companies lose their grip on identities and AI/SaaS workflow adoption unless they make dramatic changes. Even the installation of the first entrants to AI browsers will create an identity and data loss attack surface, so the diligence to gain observability and control on all user behavior and workflows on corporate systems is a must-have to survive.

Social Engineering will Have a Renaissance

The human brain was designed to gather berries and build shelter, not examine pixel-perfect recreations of their boss. Most humans weren’t ready for the information age and we have seen mis/disinformation spread like wildfire. The ever-accelerating ability for AI to mimic brands, applications, human voice and video is going to take fraud in 2026 to new, dystopian levels. What we are witnessing with attacks like the video-driven ClickFix phishing attacks, which are already wildly successful, will be a blueprint for future attacks in which something that seems completely normal, spurred with urgency, will fool not just the indiscriminate user but also the more tech-savvy and aware. We are going to witness fraud that has the sophistication of a blockbuster movie start appearing in our inboxes, documents and search engines. User training will be essential, as will more controls over user inputs across systems. I wish us all luck navigating it, we will learn a lot very quickly.

Data Leaks are the New Ransom

Ahh, ransomware, the heavily profitable industry that has plagued us for decades now. We have fought so hard to silo and protect our data, protect systems accordingly and plan for recovery. These days, people seem to forget that data is the goal and the crown jewels; very rarely does a ransom exist without the threat of disclosure. In 2026, the amount of data sprawl within organizations to SaaS and AI vendors will create another profitable way to hold data hostage, simply by harvesting what organizations have exposed to these applications and language models. In our personal lives, we rarely read the terms of service for apps. Professionally, there is plenty of scrutiny around data standards of vendors, but not enough around protection, data reselling, LLM usage, and subprocessor controls. Given the level of identity abuse in 2025, more and more SaaS vendors will be targeted by malicious actors. The adoption of AI browsers will lead to plenty of accidental disclosure to public LLMs that someone keen enough can learn to harvest quickly. Organizations need to train users heavily on AI hygiene and immediately put guardrails in place over workflows. Heavy scrutiny of all vendors who touch your data is now more important than ever.

Into the Light: A 2026 Built on Visibility, Control and Confidence

So how did we get to this point? It started with the explosion of cloud and SaaS in the 2000s, which, in many ways, forced the browser to evolve. Browsers moved from being a simple tool for viewing web pages into the primary interface for modern work. And that makes it the richest target in enterprise security.

If 2025 forced us to finally acknowledge the browser, 2026 will compel us to confront the explosion of the "unseen" attack surface - the space where human behavior, generative AI, and corporate data intersect outside traditional security perimeters. This means we have to meet users directly where work happens instead of trying to build more fences. When equipped with the proper visibility and control we need to identify risks, we will see the tides changing towards a stronger overall cybersecurity posture. Cybersecurity is a team sport and it’s up to us to work together to make 2027 predictions less daunting.

If you are ready to start protecting your workforce and level up your confidence in your users' safety, reach out to us to have a conversation or a demo today.