AI is fundamentally changing the economics of cyberattacks in Australia. Adversaries are no longer scaling through the workforce, but rather through automation. Leaders can’t rely on human-paced defences in a machine-paced threat environment. 

Here are the top security trends to watch out for in 2026 and beyond:

Compressed Attack Timelines Due to Autonomous AI

In 2026, the rapid acceleration of autonomous AI-driven attacks will be one of the top challenges facing Australian organisations. 

Attackers will utilise both generative and autonomous AI capabilities to identify weaknesses, test entry points and launch exploits with minimal human involvement. Attack timelines will be drastically reduced. A typical breach in 2026 will take hours, not weeks, to have an impact. 

Organisations need to look at quickly modernising their security stack with AI-powered tools that enable them to analyse and automate at speed and scale, especially during the detect, contain and respond phases of their security playbooks.

An Akamai report revealed that Australia was the most targeted country in the Asia Pacific & Japan (APJ) region in 2024, with 20.3 billion web and API attacks, driven by the rise of AI-powered applications, which expand the attack surface and create new, automation-friendly vulnerabilities.

AI-powered social engineering will exploit this behavioural and psychological vulnerability on an even larger scale in Australia. Vendor and supply chain risk management will become critical for organisations in 2026. AI-driven attacks will also influence cyber insurance, with insurers increasing scrutiny, imposing conditional coverage, and raising premiums.

As AI expedite offensive tactics, human-centric cybersecurity operations will struggle to keep up.  Australian organisations must equip their Security Operation Centres with AI-powered detection, containment and response capabilities, strengthen API security, retrain cyber teams on AI-assisted tooling and invest in security automation designed to counter adversaries. 

APIs to Become the Primary Vector for Application-layer Breaches

The rise of digital economies, where APIs underpin everything from financial services to government platforms, makes them preferred targets over web applications, which typically have higher levels of monitoring and protection. 

Cyber criminals are using AI to generate exploit code, automate vulnerability discovery, and craft highly personalised phishing lures, often exploiting synthetic media.

The adoption of “vibe-coding,” where generative AI is used as an intelligent assistant in creating APIs, has further accelerated API development cycles and introduced a new layer of risk. AI-assisted coding has been linked to increased misconfigurations, insecure default settings, and overlooked vulnerabilities. 

In 2026, the trend points to deeper AI integration across the attack chain, with cybercriminals increasingly targeting operational gaps such as improper API authorisation, excessive data exposure, and weak business logic.

By 2026, attackers are expected to exploit not only coding flaws but also operational blind spots such as improper API authorisation, excessive data exposure, and weak business logic. High API-centric industries, such as financial services, government/public sector and retail/e-commerce, are very likely to bear the brunt of increasingly sophisticated API attacks due to the volume of sensitive data flowing across their platforms. 

An Akamai API-security impact study found that 95% of Australian organisations reported at least one API security incident in the past year, with the average cost around $493,000 per incident.

Australian organisations need to adopt specialised API security tools that discover, test, and protect APIs throughout their lifecycle, build a complete API inventory and automate proper testing at various AI-assisted development stages to spot issues early and potentially prevent security breaches.

The Full Democratisation of Ransomware

Ransomware will be a completely democratised mass-scale cybercrime economy in 2026, driven by commoditised RaaS subscriptions, AI-powered “vibe-hacking,” and increased collaboration among cybercriminals, hacktivists, and state-aligned operators. 

We expect an increase in the frequency and speed of ransomware campaigns, expansion of targets to include supply chain partners, and changes in coercion tactics that blend data theft, disruption, and psychological pressure. 

Vibe-hacking will mainstream AI across the typical ransomware attack chain, with most of the manual tasks, such as building multi-lingual phishing lures, vulnerability scans, lateral movement, and defence evasion, being augmented by AI. 

Data-rich sectors like finance, healthcare, retail, and media will be more prone to intensified targeting, while managed service providers and digital supply chains face a heightened risk of being targeted as cyber criminals exploit pre-existing trust relationships. 

In 2026, organisations should be anticipating increasingly frequent and sophisticated ransomware attacks. They should also ensure that adequate operational resilience has been built into all critical aspects of the business to maintain the continuity of critical functions during and after attacks. 

High-tech industries such as semiconductors remain especially vulnerable. Critical industries such as the public sector, energy and healthcare will increasingly be targeted in 2026 not only by financially motivated cybercriminals, but also by advanced nation-state threat actors and geopolitical hacktivist groups.

Australian organisations must build resilience and scale up strategies, threat intelligence and incident response playbooks and implement zero-trust controls to counteract extortion shocks. In 2026, operational resilience must be a key priority for Australian organisations to defend against and recover from AI-enhanced ransomware threats.

In 2026, security teams need to operate at the same velocity as the attackers by detecting, analysing, and containing threats in real time. This starts with modernising API governance, investing in automated threat containment, and strengthening resilience across supply chains. Organisations that make this shift early will be the ones to better protect customer trust and maintain business continuity in an evolving AI-driven threat landscape.