The State of Cybersecurity in 2026: Key Segments, Insights, and Innovations

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Cybersecurity is being reshaped by the expansion of cloud infrastructure, AI, distributed systems, and increasingly complex digital environments. As organizations manage more identities, devices, data, and internet-facing infrastructure, security is shifting toward continuous visibility, control, and the ability to respond to risk at scale.

This report examines how core areas of cybersecurity are evolving in response to that shift. Across identity security, telemetry management, human security, endpoint management, human risk intelligence, exposure management, email and domain security, connected device security, AI-native security operations, and cloud security, it explores how organizations are adapting to threats that increasingly move across systems, identities, and infrastructure rather than targeting a single point of failure.

Read the full report here: https://report.papryon.com/thehackernews

Identity Security — Keeper Security

Identity has become one of the most important security boundaries in modern organizations. As cloud infrastructure, remote work, automation, and AI agents expand the number of identities requiring access, organizations are moving toward continuous governance, least privilege, and stronger control over both human and non-human identities.

“Managing multiple disconnected tools is itself a security liability.”

— Darren Guccione, CEO & Co-Founder, Keeper Security

Website: keepersecurity.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/keeper-security

Telemetry & Data Management — Cribl

Security teams are generating more telemetry than ever, but simply collecting more data does not necessarily create better visibility. Organizations are increasingly focused on controlling how telemetry is routed, structured, retained, and reused across security tools, while AI is creating new requirements for the quality and monitoring of security data.

“The winning security programs in 2026 and beyond aren't the ones ingesting the most data. They're the ones who can route, reshape, and reuse it on demand.”

— Nicole Beckwith, Senior Director, Security Engineering & Operations, Cribl

Website: cribl.io

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cribl

Endpoint Management — Automox

As organizations manage increasingly distributed endpoint environments, security teams need to reduce the time between identifying a weakness and applying an effective control. Continuous patching, configuration management, automated remediation, and visibility across Windows, macOS, and Linux are becoming central to endpoint security.

“Patch what's patchable, mitigate what isn't, and govern the endpoint continuously.”

— Justin Talerico, CEO, Automox

Website: automox.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/automox

Human Risk Intelligence — Nisos

Security teams are increasingly looking beyond traditional technical controls to understand the people behind emerging threats. Human risk intelligence combines investigative expertise, digital attribution, and external intelligence to identify risks involving employees, executives, candidates, and third parties.

“Identity Integrity is the new firewall.”

— Ryan LaSalle, CEO, Nisos

Website: nisos.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nisos

Exposure Management — Surf AI

Exposure management is shifting from discovering vulnerabilities toward continuously reducing the exposures that matter. As environments become more complex, organizations need to understand how individual weaknesses connect, who owns them, and what actions can safely reduce risk.

“Discovery is commoditized. The middle is hard.”

— Yair Grindlinger, Co-Founder & CEO, Surf AI

Website: surf.ai

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/surf-ai

Human Security — Adaptive Security

AI-powered social engineering is making phishing, voice cloning, deepfakes, and impersonation attacks easier to create and scale. Human security is therefore moving beyond annual awareness training toward continuous, personalized simulations and risk-based intervention across email, voice, SMS, and video.

“Traditional awareness programs weren’t built for today’s threats. Human security must be continuous, personalized, and responsive to real-world risk.”

— Andrew Jones, Co-Founder & CPO, Adaptive Security

Website: adaptivesecurity.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/adaptivesecurity

Email & Domain Security — Red Sift

Digital impersonation is increasingly an infrastructure problem rather than an email problem alone. Attackers can combine fraudulent domains, DNS abuse, websites, and email campaigns to impersonate organizations, making visibility across the wider internet-facing environment increasingly important.

“Every part of the chain — email, domain, DNS, certificate — is a trust decision made in public infrastructure.”

— Rahul Powar, Co-Founder & CEO, Red Sift

Website: redsift.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/red-sift

Connected Device Security — Asimily

As connected environments expand, organizations are managing an increasingly complex mix of devices across their infrastructure. Security teams need to understand which devices are exposed, how vulnerabilities could be exploited, and which controls can reduce risk without disrupting operations. For connected environments, this makes continuous visibility, remediation, and enforcement essential.

“Knowing a device is at risk has to end in an enforced control, and it has to hold as the fleet doubles.”

— Shankar Somasundaram, CEO, Asimily

Website: asimily.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/asimily

AI-Native Security Operations — SentinelOne

Security operations are facing a growing gap between the speed of modern attacks and the capacity of human teams to investigate them. AI is increasingly being applied within the SOC to automate investigation, connect evidence, and reduce the manual workload required to understand incidents.

“AI accelerates, supports and suggests, but does not replace human judgment.”

— Paolo Cecchi, Area VP Sales, Mediterranean Region, SentinelOne

Website: sentinelone.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sentinelone

Cloud Security — CrowdStrike

Cloud environments are becoming a central target for identity-driven attacks as adversaries exploit credentials, configurations, and cloud controls to move through organizations. Security teams are therefore moving toward unified, real-time protection across identity, endpoint, and cloud environments.

“Traditional CDR capabilities that rely on static risk models and log batch processing... are simply too slow for today's threat landscape.”

— Kartik Shahani, Vice President of India & SAARC, CrowdStrike

Website: crowdstrike.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/crowdstrike

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