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The priorities for 2026 are practical, not speculative: secure AI use, prepare for geopolitical disruption, reduce fraud and identity risk, remediate exploitable vulnerabilities quickly, and hold suppliers accountable for secure products. Leaders should fund them as a connected risk program, with named owners and measures tied to critical business services—not as a collection of disconnected technology purchases.
The World Economic Forum’s 2026 findings explain why those areas are rising: 94% of respondents identified AI as the most significant driver of cybersecurity change in 2026, and 73% said they or someone in their network was personally affected by cyber-enabled fraud in 2025. Those are survey perceptions and reported experiences, not counts of attacks or estimates of causal impact.
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What should leaders fund first in 2026?
Start with the controls that protect important identities and services, then close the exposures that could interrupt those services. The exact order depends on what the organization operates and where it is exposed; a bank, a manufacturer, and a small company that relies on cloud payment services will not have identical risk profiles.
A useful funding test is whether an investment reduces likely loss, covers critical assets and identities, can be deployed in time to matter, improves continuity or recovery, has an accountable owner, reduces unnecessary supplier dependence, and produces measurable progress against a recognized framework such as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) or relevant CISA goals.
#1 Best Overall
| Priority | What to fund | Evidence of execution |
|---|---|---|
| AI security | Tool and data-flow inventory, pre-deployment security review, and ongoing governance | Known AI services and owners; documented assessments and follow-up |
| Disruption resilience | Critical-service mapping, continuity testing, and response exercises with business leaders | Test results, recovery gaps, and assigned corrective actions |
| Fraud and identity | Phishing-resistant authentication and controls for sensitive payment or account changes | Coverage of priority users and verified change procedures |
| Vulnerability response | Risk-based remediation capacity, ownership, and deadlines | Tracked high-risk exposures and remediation status |
| Supplier security | Secure defaults, lifecycle support, transparency, and outcome requirements in procurement | Documented requirements and vendor accountability |
Use this as a decision aid, not a universal ranking or a claim that any single control prevents every incident. The World Economic Forum’s 2026 report describes the wider pressure behind the choices: “Cybersecurity risk in 2026 is accelerating, fuelled by advances in AI, deepening geopolitical fragmentation and the complexity of supply chains.”
1. Secure AI adoption before it becomes invisible infrastructure
AI is the most prominent source of change in the WEF’s 2026 survey. In the same survey, 64% of respondents said their organizations had processes to assess AI-tool security, up from 37% in 2025; 87% identified AI-related vulnerabilities as the fastest-growing cyber risk during 2025. These measures reflect what respondents reported and perceived, rather than a measured rate of incidents.
Make AI use visible
- Maintain an inventory of approved AI tools, their business owners, and the data they can access or receive.
- Include employee-procured and embedded vendor features in the inventory where they process organizational information.
- Record the purpose of each use, the information involved, and the systems or suppliers on which it depends.
Review before deployment, then keep reviewing
Require a security assessment before a new AI tool or significant feature is put into use. Review access controls, data retention and use, logging, incident notification, update practices, and the vendor’s responsibility for security across the product lifecycle. Reassess when the tool, model, data flow, or business use changes; a one-time approval will not keep pace with changing products and vulnerabilities.
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2. Treat geopolitical disruption as a continuity problem
The WEF reports that 64% of organizations account for geopolitically motivated cyberattacks in their mitigation strategies. It also reports that 23% of public-sector organizations said they lacked sufficient cyber-resilience capabilities. The latter figure concerns public-sector respondents, not all organizations.
For business leaders, the actionable question is not only whether a particular threat actor may target the organization. It is which critical services could become unavailable if a supplier, cloud platform, communications channel, or shared infrastructure were disrupted.
Map critical services and dependencies
- Identify the business functions that must continue, the systems and people they rely on, and the suppliers whose failure could interrupt them.
- For each critical function, establish a degraded operating mode: what work can continue, who can authorize it, and what data or safeguards remain essential.
- Set practical recovery expectations and confirm that backups, alternative processes, and contact routes support them.
Exercise the decisions, not just the technical response
CISA’s U.S.-government guidance for corporate leaders urges organizations to focus on critical business functions, conduct continuity tests, lower thresholds for reporting potential incidents, and include senior executives and board members in response exercises. CISA says, “Cyber incident response plans should include not only your security and IT teams, but also senior business leadership and Board members.” It also advises testing whether critical business functions can remain available after an intrusion.
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Rank #3
3. Put fraud resistance and identity protection together
Cyber-enabled fraud topped CEO concern in the WEF’s 2026 findings, while CISOs continued to rank ransomware and supply-chain resilience near the top. The report says 73% of respondents had been personally affected by cyber-enabled fraud in 2025, either directly or through someone in their network. This is a survey finding about reported experience, not an estimate that 73% of organizations suffered a cyberattack.
Fraud controls should cover the actions an attacker would want to manipulate, not just the login screen. For organizations handling money or customer accounts, a useful starting point is a written verification process for new payees, changed payment instructions, unusual withdrawals, and sensitive account changes. Use a second channel or independent approval for high-impact changes; do not treat a reply to the same potentially compromised email thread as independent verification.
Make authentication harder to phish
CISA’s current cybersecurity goals point organizations toward phishing-resistant multifactor authentication (MFA). FIDO2 security keys are one physical way to implement phishing-resistant authentication. Prioritize administrators, finance staff, remote access, and other accounts whose compromise could materially affect operations, then track coverage and exceptions.
Phishing-resistant MFA makes credential theft harder, but it does not eliminate social engineering, compromised devices, or every form of account takeover. Pair it with least-privilege access, prompt removal of stale accounts, monitoring for unusual activity, and a clear route for staff to report suspected fraud or account compromise.
4. Remediate high-risk vulnerabilities on a risk basis
A long list of open vulnerabilities is not a useful measure of safety by itself. Assign owners and deadlines based on exploitation risk and business impact, giving urgent attention to weaknesses affecting internet-exposed systems, privileged access, and critical services. Ensure teams can identify affected assets, apply fixes or mitigations, and verify that remediation worked.
CISA’s Binding Operational Directive 26-04 is a dated example of risk-prioritized vulnerability remediation requirements for U.S. federal agencies; it is not a general private-sector mandate. CISA warns that AI may compress the time between vulnerability disclosure and exploitation, strengthening the case for an operating process that can move quickly rather than relying on infrequent patch cycles.
Measure whether the process is working
- Track the age and status of high-risk exposures, including any approved exception, its rationale, and its expiration or review date.
- Measure time to remediation for the priority categories the organization has defined, and identify recurring bottlenecks such as asset ownership or testing capacity.
- When a fix cannot be applied promptly, document compensating measures and the decision-maker who accepts the remaining risk.
5. Make secure-by-design a procurement requirement
Security depends partly on products and services an organization does not build itself. CISA’s strategic plan emphasizes secure defaults and lifecycle accountability. The White House’s U.S. national cybersecurity strategy calls for government–private-sector coordination. Microsoft’s Secure Future Initiative (SFI) is a vendor example of platform engineering mapped to Zero Trust and NIST CSF; it is not independent validation of Microsoft’s security or proof that a customer is protected by adopting its products.
Translate the policy-to-product discussion into purchasing and renewal questions. Ask vendors what security settings are enabled by default, how long they support a product, how vulnerabilities are disclosed and fixed, what telemetry or incident information customers receive, and who is responsible for which controls. Include measurable requirements and a way to verify them in contracts or service reviews when the business risk warrants it.
Best Value
Do not judge a supplier solely by a certification or a broad promise. Establish which service and data the supplier touches, what happens if it is unavailable or compromised, and whether the organization can recover or move to an alternative. Make exceptions visible to the business owner rather than allowing them to disappear into procurement paperwork.
6. Turn leadership oversight into an operating control
Governance matters when it changes decisions before and during an incident. CISA advises leaders to empower CISOs in risk decisions, lower incident-reporting thresholds, involve executives and boards in exercises, focus on critical business functions, test continuity, and plan for worst-case scenarios. A board does not need to direct technical remediation; it does need enough information to challenge priorities and understand accepted risk.
Agree on a small set of measures that connect controls to business outcomes: priority identity coverage, high-risk vulnerability remediation status, critical-service continuity test results, response-exercise actions, and supplier exceptions. Assign a responsible executive to each measure, establish a review cadence, and require overdue actions or material risk acceptances to be escalated. Use NIST CSF or CISA goals to make progress legible, while tailoring targets to the organization’s services and exposure.
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A practical sequence for the next 90 days
- Weeks 1–2: Identify critical services, their owners, and their most important technology and supplier dependencies. Confirm who can make urgent risk and continuity decisions.
- Weeks 3–4: Inventory AI tools and data flows, review high-impact identity and payment-change processes, and produce a prioritized list of high-risk vulnerabilities.
- Weeks 5–8: Fund and assign the highest-impact fixes: phishing-resistant MFA for priority accounts, AI assessments for material uses, and remediation or mitigation for the most urgent exposures.
- Weeks 9–12: Exercise a cyber disruption scenario with business leaders, test continuity for a critical function, and review key supplier security and recovery arrangements. Assign and track corrective actions.
Use the results to set the next funding cycle: invest where testing shows a real gap in preventing loss, sustaining critical work, or recovering safely. As WEF Managing Director Jeremy Jurgens put it, “Cybersecurity is not predetermined. Its future depends on the choices we make today.”
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