Building Cyber Resilience: How Security Governance Will Evolve in 2026

Security Markets Consolidate Into Ecosystems

In 2026, AI and machine learning will become a baseline layer across nearly all classes of cybersecurity solutions. What were once discrete AI features are evolving into agent-based systems that significantly increase the level of automated defense. This shift is accompanied by a rise in trust-based and supply chain attacks that exploit smaller contractors. Attacks are becoming more industrialized, repetitive, and harder to detect.

New attack vectors are emerging around AI infrastructure, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, and open-source repositories.

The cybersecurity market itself is consolidating into ecosystems. This reduces operating costs for customers, but increases concentration risk when a platform is compromised. Demand is shifting away from pure monitoring toward response and recovery, as only a small number of organizations are capable of handling large-scale attacks on their own.

This roadmap reflects expectations for AI platforms and the protection of critical information infrastructure, while aligning with state regulation in the sector. Implementing these measures is expected to reduce service outages, data leaks, and social engineering fraud experienced by citizens. Recovery times for government and financial services should improve, and the role of reliable anti-spam technologies will continue to grow.

A Tighter Regulatory Framework

Between 2026 and 2028, the Russian cybersecurity market is expected to treat cyber resilience as a core KPI, increasing investment in security operations centers, threat hunting, disaster recovery, and incident response. Vendor audits and zero-trust practices will become standard for large enterprises and operators of critical infrastructure. Protection of AI environments will intensify, while import substitution enters a phase of operational maturity.

These trends will be reinforced by regulatory pressure. Key drivers include Federal Law No. 187 on critical information infrastructure, requirements issued by the Federal Service for Technical and Export Control (Order No. 239), and Presidential Decree No. 250, which establishes personal accountability for executives. Cybersecurity is becoming a board-level management priority.

In 2026, companies will face an uncomfortable but predictable trend. Attacks increasingly do not come head-on, but through parties that businesses have learned to trust. Over the past year, many of us have repeatedly seen cases where a contractor compromise gives attackers full access to internal services. It is clear that AI-driven attack automation is being used more widely. AI helps identify vulnerabilities and exploitation parameters. Protecting remote access therefore remains critically important

Svetlana Semenova

Head of Product Marketing, S-Terra

Exports of Russian cybersecurity solutions are expected to remain niche, primarily targeting CIS countries and other friendly markets. Success is most likely through bundled product-and-service offerings such as SOC services, antifraud, and email or perimeter protection. Managed security and incident response services are seen as the most realistic export models. Large-scale exports remain constrained by sanctions and global competition. By 2026, cybersecurity will be viewed as a measure of management effectiveness, with AI as a mandatory component of defense.

Lessons From Global-Scale Attacks

In July 2021, a ransomware attack on Kaseya VSA affected up to 1,500 customer organizations. Kaseya quickly released a decryption key, but the incident became a textbook example of a supply chain attack. Earlier that year, on May 7, 2021, hackers shut down operations at Colonial Pipeline, receiving $5 million in cryptocurrency to restore access. The disruption triggered broader economic consequences.

Systemic dependency risk was further exposed by the Log4Shell vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228) in Apache Log4j in December 2021, which exploited the Lookup function and was fixed in version 2.15.0. In May and June 2023, mass exploitation of the zero-day vulnerability CVE-2023-34362 in MOVEit Transfer affected hundreds of organizations, including Shell, demonstrating the serial nature of modern attacks. In March 2024, a backdoor discovered in XZ Utils highlighted the fragility of the broader open-source ecosystem.

Starting May 30, 2025, strict liability, including potential criminal penalties, will apply to personal data breaches. From September 1, 2025, organizations will be required to anonymize and provide personal data upon request from the Ministry of Digital Development. Presidential Decree No. 250, issued on May 1, 2022, further reinforces the shift toward cyber resilience and personal responsibility for executives.

Speed and Resilience Over Tools

In 2026, Russia’s cybersecurity focus will shift toward speed and resilience rather than the acquisition of new software. Organizations will need to invest in processes, response capabilities, recovery planning, and vendor oversight. As attackers increasingly scale phishing and exploitation with AI, defenders will rely more heavily on automated correlation and response. Outcomes will depend on effective management of data, access controls, and telemetry.

Supply chain attacks are becoming a new reality. Large enterprises will tighten requirements and audits for their contractors, while small and medium-sized businesses will need to significantly raise their baseline level of cyber hygiene to avoid becoming easy entry points for attackers.

The trend toward consolidation and platformization of cybersecurity solutions will continue. While this lowers total costs for customers, it also increases systemic risk. A single critical failure or platform-level compromise can escalate into a large-scale incident affecting all users.