Cybersecurity in 2025 moved decisively from “advanced persistent threat” to “always-on, AI-enabled risk,” especially for regulated, security‑sensitive sectors. Executives planning for 2026 should treat cyber as an integrated business risk discipline, not a series of point technology decisions.
What 2025 Made Clear
2025 validated three structural trends: AI‑enabled attacks at scale, higher‑impact ransomware against critical services, and expanding regulatory and board‑level expectations. At the same time, new NIST guidance and industry reports emphasized supply chain exposure, AI system risk, and the need to operationalize governance, not just publish policies.
Key Cybersecurity Themes for CISOs:
- AI became a force multiplier for both attackers and defenders, changing the economics of phishing, social engineering, and intrusion.
- Ransomware and data extortion increasingly targeted healthcare, government, and critical infrastructure, driving prolonged outages and regulatory scrutiny.
- Regulators and standard setters expanded expectations around AI, supply chain, and resilience, with NIST issuing a CSF AI profile and additional AI‑related security guidance.
Critical Cyber Events and Patterns
While no single “mega breach” defined 2025, the aggregate impact across healthcare, public sector, and industrial environments was substantial. For executive teams, the pattern matters more than any individual headline.
Notable 2025 developments:
- Healthcare remained a prime target, with some of the largest reported incidents affecting millions of patient records through ransomware and vendor compromises. As CMS is retiring the legacy MARS-E standard and replacing it with the ARC-AMPE framework, a modernized set of cybersecurity and privacy controls for ACA, Medicaid, and partner entities.
- Ransomware attacks against critical sectors (manufacturing, energy, and healthcare) grew significantly, with one report citing a 34% global increase and roughly half of incidents hitting critical infrastructure.
- Several high‑profile incidents involved prolonged, stealthy access to cloud and on‑prem environments, underscoring gaps in identity governance, segmentation, and continuous monitoring.
These events reinforced the need for:
- Independent risk and compliance assessments mapped to critical frameworks such as NIST CSF, CIS Controls, and ISO 27001 to identify systemic weaknesses before attackers do.
- Mature incident response and business continuity capabilities to reduce dwell time, limit lateral movement, and sustain operations under active attack.
Emerging Threats to Monitor in 2026
Looking ahead, 2026 will not introduce entirely new threat categories so much as intensify existing ones, particularly where AI, identity, and supply chain intersect. Leadership teams should expect regulation, board accountability, and attacker sophistication to continue rising in parallel.
Priority trends:
- AI‑enabled attacks and AI system risk: Adversaries are using generative models for deepfake‑enabled fraud, AI‑crafted phishing (including vishing aka voice phishing), and adaptive malware that changes tactics to evade controls. At the same time, NIST’s emerging AI security guidance highlights vulnerabilities in AI models, data, and supply chains that must be governed like any other critical system.
- Ransomware 3.0 (disruption + extortion): Double‑extortion and data theft are now standard, with attackers increasingly threatening operational disruption and regulatory exposure in addition to data leakage. Organizations that depend on continuous service (hospitals, utilities, logistics, financial services) face outsized business impact from even “short” outages.
- Supply chain and third‑party exposure: Several 2025 breaches involved service providers and cloud‑hosted environments, highlighting how vendor controls, data handling, and identity architectures can become the weakest link. NIST’s AI and data supply chain guidance stresses provenance, integrity, and cryptographic assurance across partner ecosystems.
2026 Information Security Priorities and Goals
Effective entities in 2026 will treat cybersecurity as a continuous, measurable program tied to business resilience, not annual check‑the‑box exercises. The goal is to reduce the blast radius and recovery time of inevitable events while demonstrating due care to regulators, customers, and insurers.
Recommended 2026 objectives:
- Re‑baseline risk using current frameworks
- Commission an enterprise‑wide cyber risk and compliance assessment mapped to critical frameworks like NIST CSF 2.0, CIS Controls, and ISO 27001, with explicit coverage of AI, OT, and cloud.
- Use those results to refresh your cyber risk register, prioritize high‑value assets and business services, and align budget with top‑of‑funnel risk, not tool sprawl.
- Harden identity, access, and data paths
- Advance toward Zero Trust principles: strong identity governance, phishing‑resistant MFA, least‑privilege access, and network/tenant segmentation for critical systems.
- Implement structured vulnerability management and penetration testing to validate that controls meaningfully reduce exploitable attack paths, especially around privileged accounts and exposed applications.
- Elevate incident response and resilience
- Conduct independent incident response readiness assessments and tabletop exercises focused on AI‑enabled fraud, ransomware in OT/clinical environments, and third‑party compromise.
- Align business continuity and disaster recovery plans with realistic recovery time and recovery point objectives for critical services, then validate them through scenario‑based testing.
How JANUS Associates Supports a Cybersecure Execution
Independent, framework‑aligned assessments are the most reliable way to convert these trends into an actionable, board‑approved roadmap rather than a reactive list of projects. At JANUS, our core services directly align with your strategic priorities:
- Cyber risk and compliance assessments to benchmark against frameworks such as NIST CSF, CIS Controls, HIPAA, GLBA, PCI, and ISO 27001, producing a prioritized remediation roadmap and executive‑level risk narrative.
- Advanced penetration testing and vulnerability management to validate real‑world exploitability of internet‑facing, cloud, and OT assets, as well as test resilience against ransomware and AI‑enabled attack techniques.
- Incident response, disaster recovery and business continuity consulting to improve readiness and recovery maturity, including playbook development, tabletop exercises business resilience planning.
- Data protection and privacy services to strengthen encryption, access control, and data lifecycle governance across on‑prem, cloud, and third‑party environments, incorporating lessons from large‑scale healthcare and public‑sector breaches.
For 2026, all sectors should expect their cybersecurity partners to deliver independent insight, measurable risk reduction, and direct alignment with established frameworks, not just tools for their own sake.
Why Partner With JANUS?
JANUS Associates exists because cybersecurity threats are evolving faster than many organizations can respond. We believe in empowering businesses to protect their critical assets and data in an increasingly complex digital landscape.
By blending deep expertise with a proactive, tailored approach, we help leaders anticipate threats, manage risks, and build resilient cyber defenses that safeguard trust and reputation.
Our work isn’t just about technology; it’s about enabling organizations to thrive confidently in a connected world. Schedule a consultation with our team today to strengthen your security posture and stay ahead of emerging threats.
