State of Cybersecurity 2026

Christopher Souza | CEO

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, a month where businesses should take the time to ask themselves how strong their cybersecurity posture really is. That question carries more weight this year than most recent ones especially since in 2026, AI went from a tool attackers experimented with to something they routinely rely on, showing up everywhere from malware labs, phishing emails and even the oval office.

Advancements in AI or not, the story of this year’s breaches featuring recurring themes that include but are not limited to stolen passwords, unpatched firewalls, untrained employees trusted with classified information they shouldn’t have. Here’s a look at the threats that have shaped the 2026 cyber world so far, and what businesses like yours should focus on next.

AI Made Attacks Faster, Cheaper, and Easier

Our partners at Arctic Wolf found that security leaders now rank AI as their top cybersecurity concern, with 35% putting it first compared to only 25% for ransomware. Attackers are using AI to research targets, write cleaner phishing emails, and transform newly disclosed vulnerabilities into working exploits faster than ever before.

AI makes writing malware easy and based on a study testing more than 22,000 AI-assisted malware samples, 39% slipped past signature-based antivirus when they were collected. Most came from unknown or low-skill actors and people who likely couldn’t have built working malware on their own a few years ago.

The biggest headline of the year came from the AI industry itself. As we covered in our post on the Hugging Face breach, AI agents in an OpenAI test environment broke out of their sandbox, used exposed credentials to get into Hugging Face’s systems, and coordinated with each other to widen their access. Meanwhile, inside ordinary businesses, employees are adopting AI tools faster than anyone can write a policy for them, and sensitive data is ending up in places it shouldn’t.

Stories That Defined the Year

Cybersecurity issues this year kept pointing back to the same weak spots. In June, Arctic Wolf Labs traced a series of Qilin ransomware attacks to a single flaw in Palo Alto Networks VPNs. The attackers went from the firewall to encrypt entire networks, sometimes going after backups first, so victims had nothing to fall back on. In that same month, the FortiBleed leak exposed VPN credentials and configuration files for 73,000+ Fortinet devices which were exposed by passwords that were never changed.

July also brought a pause on CMMC Phase II, announced the same day the NSA warned that Russian state actors were exploiting poorly configured networks, something we dug into in one of our many informative CMMC posts.

Over the summer, a large Microsoft 365 phishing campaign used fake voicemail alerts to hijack login sessions, even on accounts protected by MFA, and then quietly exposed payroll and banking emails.

September capped things off with actively exploited flaws in Cisco’s email gateway, Citrix NetScaler, and N-able N-central, a platform IT providers use to manage their clients. Different vendors, same lesson: cyberattacks are easier than ever to create, and attackers are targeting the devices at the edge of your network and the accounts that unlock it.

Ransomware Remains a Looming Threat

With so much focus on AI, it’s easy to forget that ransomware remains one of the most expensive problems a business can face. Criminals can now rent ransomware kits instead of building their own, and most groups steal your data before they encrypt it, so backups can hardly be relied on.

Stolen credentials are just as dangerous. Plenty of attackers simply log in, using passwords grabbed by infostealer malware or reused from an old breach. And when a serious flaw in a firewall or VPN goes public, scanning for vulnerable devices often starts within hours. If you patch once a month, that unfortunately still leaves the door open for awhile.

In most of this year’s incidents, the attacker exploited known gaps that had been sitting there for months, whether it was an old password, a missing patch, or an account without MFA.

The Importance of Patching

Microsoft addressed 570 vulnerabilities in July and more than 900 in September across its product lineup. With so many patches focusing on security fixes and reliability improvements, IT teams have plenty to review before deployment.

This summer’s Dell issue showed why that review matters. Windows 11 updates released in June and July introduced a compatibility problem with an Intel driver on certain Dell computers, affecting performance, power consumption, and system behavior. Microsoft temporarily blocked the updates before releasing a fix. A patch designed to keep systems up to date created yet another problem for businesses to tackle.

Our clients avoided those problems as TSI held back the affected update until the issue was fixed, then deployed with the corrected release. That’s why patch management is so important. Knowing what needs immediate attention, what requires further review, and when a known compatibility issue calls for a different deployment plan.

Having patches vetted by a team that can review vendor guidance, check for known issues, and test updates before a rollout can save your business time and money. Microsoft itself provides preview releases so administrators can validate changes ahead of monthly security updates. Urgent vulnerabilities still need prompt attention, but careful review helps businesses address security risks without introducing avoidable downtime.

Your People Are a Key Part of the Defense

No security tool will catch every fake invoice, phishing email, or cloned voice on the phone. At some point, an employee has to decide whether something is real, and that moment is exactly what AI-powered attacks are built to exploit. The upside is that training works. Organizations that fully rolled out Arctic Wolf’s awareness program saw phishing-related incident tickets drop 36% within four months.

What matters most is keeping the training ongoing. Cybersecurity is constantly changing, so your employees will need to stay in the loop. Short, regular lessons and realistic phishing simulations do far more than a once-a-year video. Add a clear policy on which AI tools are approved, plus a simple rule that any request involving money or payroll gets confirmed by phone, and you’ve locked the doors attackers try and open.

How TSI Can Help

Staying protected comes down to knowing the basics and keeping them up: MFA, timely and carefully vetted patching, endpoint protection, tested backups, tight access controls, and someone watching your environment around the clock. AI is farming security vulnerabilities and stacking zero-day exploits, so you need a team that knows when to move quickly on a fixes and when a known update issue needs to be resolved before deployment. That’s a lot for an internal team to juggle on top of everything else.

As an MSP and MSSP, TSI offers a full range of cybersecurity services, including:

• Security monitoring and alerting (SIEM) with managed detection and response
• Vulnerability scanning and firewall management to keep your perimeter patched and locked down
• Ransomware prevention and backup and disaster recovery so you can recover without paying a fortune that cripples your company
• Zero Trust access controls and vital security awareness training for your employees
• Penetration testing, security assessments, and vCISO guidance for compliance needs like CMMC, HIPAA, and PCI

Contact TSI Today!

Cybersecurity Awareness Month is a good excuse to take a hard look at your defenses, but attackers don’t wait for October. Cybersecurity is a year-long effort and if you’re not sure how your business would hold up against the threats we saw in 2026, now is the time to find out.

Contact TSI today to schedule a consultation and talk with our team about where your gaps are and how to close them. If you think you’re dealing with a breach right now, call us immediately at 1-508-543-6979.

Stay safe this fall. As we always say: Fail to prepare, prepare to fail!

About Technical Support International

TSI is 37-year old cybersecurity (MSSP) and IT support (MSP) company specializing in helping DIB organizations address their NIST 800-171 and CMMC compliance obligations. As a CMMC-AB Registered Provider Organization (RPO), TSI offers a complete NIST 800-171 and CMMC support solution to help guide our clients toward a successful certification audit and provide the assurance that they’re adhering to these expansive compliance requirements.