In the four years since we launched our first State of Cyberwarfare report, the global threat landscape has shifted from a state of quiet concern to a total pressure cooker. What began in 2023 as a warning against organizational indifference has evolved at an exponential pace only paralleled by a rocket ship. We have moved with terrifying speed from the weaponization of history’s largest election cycle in 2024 to the arrival of AI-supercharged warfare in 2025. Today, in 2026, we are no longer looking at a future threat; we are operating in a reality where the lines between digital disruption and physical conflict have effectively dissolved.
The acceleration we’ve witnessed over such a short period is a sobering reminder that our traditional timelines for defense are obsolete. We have entered a triple-threat era defined by fragmented geopolitics, the democratization of state-level destructive power via agentic AI, and a widening readiness gap. While awareness and fear of cyberwarfare have reached an all-time high and many industry-wide have made great strides to improve our readiness, our collective ability to defend is not yet keeping pace with the sheer velocity of our adversaries.
