It’s that time once again – that time when we emerge, blinking and confused, from that post-Boxing Day limbo state into a bright and hopeful New Year, and as ever, that can mean only one thing (well, two if you’ve still not finished eating all your Christmas chocolate – in which case, it also means you probably want to get on with that before your family finds it).

We digress – it means that it’s time for our vendors to once again gather around the Kite crystal ball and draw from it their most pressing cybersecurity predictions for the coming year!

1. Compliance is Key
2. Microsoft 365 Governance
3. The Growing Role of AI
4. The Human Element

More than ever, compliance is key

“Protective DNS continues to demonstrate its value in reducing financial cybercrime, as seen in Ukraine and the Baltic states. More countries are likely to follow that model by deploying National Protective DNS services via telecom operators in a bid to disrupt the industrial scale cybercrime that is blighting European and Asian countries. With Protective DNS mandated by directives such as NIS 2, we can expect to see governments and critical infrastructure organisations embracing Protective DNS as a cornerstone of their cyber security strategy.”

Craig Sanderson – Principal Cybersecurity Strategist
Infoblox

“In 2026, securely sharing data won’t be a competitive advantage, it will be the minimum standard of doing business. In a world driven by collaboration and AI, trust will flow to the organisations that can share information confidently, compliantly, and without compromise. Data classification won’t just be a cybersecurity function; it’ll be the foundation of digital trust. As AI, regulation, and hybrid work reshape the way we handle information, organisations that can see, label, and securely share their data will be the ones that stay compliant, resilient, and trusted.”

Scott Chenery – Regional Manager UK & Ireland
Kiteworks

“NIS2 in EU, the Cyber Security & Resilience Bill in the UK and DORA in the finance sector are examples of regulations bringing fresh emphasis to demonstrable containment and ensuring that a compromise in one zone doesn’t automatically cascade into another. Channel partners might start to prioritise working with vendors who offer tangible, measurable risk reduction – like physical network isolation and segmentation – rather than adding another software block in an already-saturated market.”

Mark Pearce – Regional Manager UK & Ireland
Goldilock Secure

The criticality of Microsoft 365 governance

“Since the dawn of the cloud, backup strategies have focused almost exclusively on data. But in 2026, this will no longer be enough. Large, complex, and business-critical cloud platforms like Microsoft 365 can contain hundreds of thousands of unique configurations that define how securely they operate. Cyber criminals are increasingly targeting these configurations, tampering with them, deleting them, or taking control of environments and forcing organisations into disruptive, full re-configuration processes. We predict that, in 2026 and beyond, data backup vendors and other resilience providers will shift their strategies to make configuration protection a central pillar, recognising that safeguarding data alone is no longer sufficient.”

Rob Edmondson – Senior Director of Product Marketing
CoreView

“I’m expecting a significant change in the way businesses consume Microsoft and negotiate their packages. With the divested elements such as teams out of the standard packages and the new format for discount conversations (removal of level D and other volume discounts) there will be a greater focus on utilisation in 2026. Partners will be more involved in the process to extract value from Microsoft and complementing the portfolio where required.”

Blake Neate – Sales Director
Hexnode

AI will continue to shape the digital landscape – on both sides of the battleground…

“AI will not just make social engineering better; it will make it easier to buy. Social Engineering as a Service will package voice cloning, scripted call flows, and fake ‘authorise this app’ links so even mediocre criminals can sound convincing.”

Rik Ferguson – Vice President, Security Intelligence
Forescout Technologies Inc

“The most critical security danger in 2026 will not be a large-scale external ‘battleground’ for AI; it will be the internal crisis of AI governance failure. AI adoption is rapidly moving beyond the early, technically skilled users and into the general population – from your engineering team to ‘Bob from accounting’ who fails every phishing simulation. A parallel trend making this crisis worse is the rush to adopt Agentic AI systems via the Model Context Protocol (MCP).  While large organisations are approaching MCP systematically, integrating legal, API, and security teams, smaller organisations are feeling competitive pressure to rush deployment. This combination of factors creates a perfect breeding ground for long-term security debt.”

Martin Zugec – Director, Technical Marketing
Bitdefender

“I do also think AI will continue to dominate the market trends, whilst it’s like any other bubble or fad, that could burst at any time, I feel we’re already too invested into it as consumers to switch off so soon. The big players continue to invest in that space, and smaller outfits are profiting off the uncertainty of how to deploy and optimise new AI systems.”

Dan Pratt – UK Channel Manager
Hexnode

“In 2026, one of the defining trends will be a decisive shift towards pre-emptive security. Rather than simply responding to breaches after the fact, organisations will increasingly adopt proactive strategies that disrupt cyberattacks before they occur, identifying malicious intent and stopping adversaries during the earliest stages of reconnaissance and exploration. Pre-emptive cybersecurity empowers organisations to defend actively and intelligently, leveraging AI to halt threats in their tracks. For Microsoft 365, this approach goes far beyond standard threat intelligence. It means deploying advanced AI-driven administrators inside the tenant, capable not only of detecting hostile intent but also of automatically remediating risks, ensuring vulnerabilities are neutralised before they can be exploited.”

John Stevenson – Senior Product Marketing Manager
CoreView

… But human behaviour will still be the deciding factor

“Cybercrime will fragment further into specialists, access brokers, data launderers, extortion operators, but the tooling will keep getting reused. In 2026, behaviours will be a better clue than actor names.”

Rik Ferguson – Vice President, Security Intelligence
Forescout Technologies Inc

“With the technical barrier to entry getting lower by the day, deepfakes will continue to climb in popularity with attackers in 2026. Expect more phone calls and video conferences to reach help desks, finance departments, and recruiters, for instance. Still, we can win that deepfake battle with training and education. Bad actors may use advanced deepfake tools, but our core psychology is the same as it was twenty thousand years ago when survival depended on noticing what felt out of place in jungles and riverbanks. When employees develop that same instinct in digital environments, they can keep themselves and those around them safe from even highly polished deepfakes because something in the interaction will be out-of-context and it will feel off.”

Eliot Baker – Director of Content Marketing
Hoxhunt

That’s all for our 2026 vendor predictions – if you’d like to learn more about Team Kite or any of our vendors, please don’t hesitate to contact us at sales@kitedistribution.co.uk, or on 01162 165600. Most importantly of all, we at Team Kite want to wish you a Happy (and secure) New Year!