What is the future of cybersecurity?

The future of cybersecurity is notoriously hard to predict. After all, every aspect of the industry changes continuously. Cyber threats evolve and the tools that defend against them mirror those changes, evolving in their own right to better defend increasingly complex networks.

We’ve explored how cybersecurity has changed in past years, threats to keep an eye on, and security trends small businesses should watch for. Now it’s time to look further ahead.

In this blog, our experienced analysts share their thoughts on the future of cybersecurity.

Cyber threats that'll remain an issue

Certain cyberattack tactics are bound to stick around—and that’s because they've proven to work. As such, these are the threats that our experts believe still pose a serious cybersecurity risk.

Malware and ransomware

Despite more than a decade of attention, ransomware remained one of the most reliable and scalable tools available to cybercriminals. With much of the ecosystem now automated and profit potential high, ransomware still offers a strong return on investment.

The continued exploitation of VPN appliances and other edge-exposed systems remained a core enabler of ransomware operations. High-profile incidents such as the SafePay ransomware compromise of Ingram Micro, enabled through a GlobalProtect VPN intrusion, demonstrated how edge exploitation quickly leads to identity abuse and disruption.

As ransomware groups looked for higher‑impact opportunities, virtualization platforms became a more regular and intentional target in 2025 with groups such as Akira expanding their tooling to encrypt workloads running on Nutanix AHV and other highly privileged infrastructure.

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Ransomware operators also benefited from the accelerating pace of vulnerability exploitation, exploiting critical flaws in platforms such as Oracle E‑Business Suite and SonicWall appliances within days of disclosure.

Human decisions

Even as technical defenses continued to advance, adversaries in 2025 relied heavily on human error, misplaced trust, and operational shortcuts to gain initial access and escalate their impact.

Social engineering remained a reliable entry point for intrusions, driven by credential theft, password reuse, and multifactor authentication (MFA) fatigue across all organizations. What changed was how these tactics were executed.

Rather than depend on malware‑laced attachments or obvious phishing links, adversaries posed as IT support, mimicked familiar workflows, and delivered support‑style instructions intended to convince users to run commands, download tools, or grant access directly.

Field Effect observed this shift most clearly in campaigns like ClickFix, first tracked in early 2025. In these cases, adversaries impersonated internal IT teams and used fake CAPTCHA prompts to guide users into manually executing malicious PowerShell commands.

The future of cybersecurity: Trends, threats, and more

Our cybersecurity analysts continuously research, investigate, and uncover emerging threats and attack tactics. Here are some key cybersecurity trends we've observed recently that we may continue to see.

Identity compromise as the primary attack vector

Organizations faced a sharp rise in attacks targeting both human and non‑human identities (such as service accounts, API keys, OAuth tokens, and other high‑privilege credentials) that often operate with limited oversight.

In September 2025, Field Effect began tracking a Microsoft Teams vishing campaign using Quick Assist to deliver a PowerShell‑based web-socket remote access trojan (RAT). Threat actors impersonated internal IT staff through rapidly created onmicrosoft[.]com tenants and rotating “Help Desk” accounts, convincing users to grant Quick Assist access that enabled privilege enumeration and multi‑stage malware execution.

This case, among others, reflects a defining 2025 trend: threat actors across multiple clusters are increasingly weaponizing identity, trust, and collaboration tools to gain initial access.

Identity has become the primary attack surface, and trusted enterprise platforms, such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Quick Assist, RMM utilities, and Microsoft 365 cloud identities, are being exploited to bypass defenses, establish persistence, and escalate access.

The disappearing perimeter

Throughout 2025, threat actors increasingly targeted the edges, exploiting a space where visibility was limited, patching lagged, and the fine line between “inside” and “outside” no longer held.

Routers, VPNs, firewalls, cloud‑exposed services, and other perimeter‑adjacent systems became high‑value entry points. This was especially true as critical vulnerabilities in edge devices, DNS services, and major web browsers saw rapid proof‑of‑concept releases and, in some cases, exploitation before organizations could respond.

These internet‑facing systems, often managed by small IT teams or third‑party providers, expanded the attack surface alongside persistent software‑supply‑chain risks.

Dependencies, libraries, and managed services introduced security gaps that were difficult to track, pushing organizations toward stronger asset discovery, better dependency management, and treating routers, DNS, and cloud APIs as important security data sources.

The perimeter no longer has a clear boundary and is becoming increasingly difficult to defend for smaller organizations.

Exploiting trust across people, platforms, and processes

Throughout 2025, Field Effect investigations revealed a consistent pattern: threat actors advanced their objectives by inserting themselves into the trusted spaces where people, tools, and workflows intersect.

Collaboration platforms such as Teams and Zoom became high‑value vectors, with adversaries using fake meeting invites, impersonated tenants, spoofed domains, and voice‑based social engineering to deliver malware, deploy remote‑access tools, and harvest credentials under the guise of routine communication.

This same pattern extended beyond support utilities into the tools administrators rely on to find and download software. One campaign, Thunderstruck, demonstrated how threat actors can move even earlier in the workflow, compromising the discovery process itself. By impersonating RVTools (a trusted VMware administration tool) in malicious search engine ads, threat actors redirected administrators to a fake installer that deployed the Thundershell payload, turning a routine search for a trusted utility into an entry point for compromise.

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Threat actors know this, and we expect to see an increase in the targeting of these services, especially those handling high-value data that can be used for extortion or to facilitate financial fraud.

AI & the future of cybersecurity

In 2025, the most significant shift in adversary capability was the increased operational use of generative AI. While AI didn’t necessarily introduce brand new attack vectors, it amplified nearly every existing one. 

Phishing & related content

Generative AI models enabled the rapid production of credible phishing content, clean malware code, multilingual lures, and automated reconnaissance. This both boosted the capabilities of advanced actors and lowered the barrier for novice ones.

Prompt injection attacks

2025 saw the rise of prompt injection attacks, with malicious instructions embedded in ordinary text redirecting AI-enabled systems to leak data, bypass controls, or execute harmful actions.

Cybercriminal marketplaces

Cybercriminal marketplaces offered AI-enhanced services such as phishing kits and malware-as-a-service platforms, while attackers exploited public interest in AI by disguising malware as fake AI tools.

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Tricking chat bots

Researchers also demonstrated how AI chatbots could be tricked into bypassing safety filters through malicious prompts hidden in fictional narratives, underscoring the need to treat AI systems as part of the attack surface.

Rapid vulnerability exploitation

As highlighted by Matt Holland, Field Effect’s Founder and CEO, AI is also enabling threat actors to treat vulnerability exploitation as a fully automated pipeline. Tasks that once required human effort, such as testing proof-of-concept exploits, identifying misconfigurations, or chaining vulnerabilities, can now be performed programmatically.

Dive deeper into the future of cybersecurity

It’s tricky to look at the calendar and predict what the future holds, especially in an industry as complex and fast-paced as cybersecurity. That said, we see the same patterns again and again. If threat actors are finding success by doing things one way, they’ll continue to.

Take the time now to build up your cybersecurity knowledge to set your business up for lasting success as changes arise and new threats emerge.

Find out what other trends we're seeing in cybersecurity in The 2026 Cyber Threat Outlook Report