Security Report · github.com/jacobdjwilson

WEF Cybersecurity Outlook 2026 Highlights AI Risks, Fraud and Resilience Gaps

Oct 21, 2026 · Original Report (PDF) ↗

Summary

The World Economic Forum’s 2026 outlook finds rising concern over AI risks, fraud and geopolitical threats. Based on 804 qualified participants across 92 countries, it also highlights uneven cyber resilience and persistent skills shortages.

Key points

Published with Accenture, the January 2026 report draws on 804 qualified survey participants across 92 countries; the survey ran from August 25 to October 1, 2025.
AI-related vulnerabilities were the fastest-growing cyber risk identified by 87% of respondents. Organizations reporting predeployment AI security assessment processes increased from 37% in 2025 to 64% in 2026.
Some 77% of organizations reported adopting AI for cybersecurity; insufficient knowledge or skills was the leading implementation hurdle, cited by 54%.
Cyber-enabled fraud affected 73% of respondents or someone in their personal or professional networks during 2025. Fraud and phishing topped CEOs’ concerns, while ransomware remained CISOs’ leading concern.
Geopolitically motivated cyberattacks informed 64% of organizations’ risk mitigation strategies. Low confidence in national responses to major critical-infrastructure incidents rose from 26% to 31%.
Among organizations with OT environments, only 32% reported monitoring OT security, 20% maintained dedicated OT security teams and 16% provided OT security reports to their boards.
Skills shortages remained uneven: 65% of respondents in Latin America and the Caribbean and 63% in sub-Saharan Africa reported missing critical people and skills. The report advocates shared intelligence, secure-by-design AI and stronger supplier oversight.

Article Details

Publisher: World Economic Forum, in collaboration with Accenture
Report Period: 2026 outlook; survey conducted from 2025-08-25 to 2025-10-01
Scope: Global executive perspectives on AI security, cybercrime, geopolitical risk, cyber resilience, supply chains and cybersecurity capability gaps.
Sample Size: 804 qualified survey participants from 92 countries, including 316 CISOs, 105 CEOs and 123 other C-suite executives; 52 participants contributed expert focus-group interviews.
Key Statistics: 87% of survey respondents identified AI-related vulnerabilities as the fastest-growing cyber risk over 2025.
64% reported processes to assess AI tools before deployment, compared with 37% in the 2025 survey; 40% reported periodic reviews and 24% one-time assessments.
73% reported that they or someone in their professional or personal network had been affected by cyber-enabled fraud during the preceding 12 months.
65% of large companies by annual revenue identified third-party and supply chain vulnerabilities as a leading resilience challenge, compared with 54% in 2025.
Insufficient cyber resilience was reported by 37% of NGOs and 23% of public-sector and international organizations, compared with 11% of private-sector organizations.
Recommendations: Protect AI training and customization data from unauthorized access, apply security-by-design principles, and maintain regular updates, authentication and encryption.
Invest in AI literacy and secure-use skills while retaining human oversight, governance and validation of automated security decisions.
Apply continuous verification, audit trails, accountable governance and zero-trust principles to AI-agent identities, permissions and interactions.
Integrate cybersecurity into procurement, assess supplier security maturity, map ecosystem dependencies and conduct incident-response and recovery exercises with partners.
Quantify cyber risk and use scenario modelling to guide resilience investments, supported by threat-intelligence sharing and public–private collaboration.