Attackers will prioritize speed over novelty as AI, automation, and underground specialization shrink the gap between intrusion and impact.
Fortinet has released its Cyberthreat Predictions Report for 2026, presenting a stark but realistic view of what the next year will hold: a cybercrime ecosystem shifting decisively from innovation to industrial-scale throughput. Drawing on global intelligence from FortiGuard Labs, the report outlines how automation, specialization, and AI are transforming cybercrime into an efficient, interconnected underground industry capable of overwhelming unprepared organizations.
According to Fortinet, 2026 will mark the point where attackers no longer rely on inventing new tools—they will focus on accelerating what already works. AI-driven systems will perform reconnaissance, automate lateral movement, parse stolen data, and even craft ransom negotiation scripts. Fully autonomous cybercrime agents are expected to emerge on the dark web, capable of executing major stages of an attack with minimal human oversight.
“Cybersecurity has become a race of systems, not individuals.”
– Rashish Pandey, Fortinet
This acceleration dramatically expands attacker capacity. What once took days will take minutes as ransomware affiliates run dozens of operations in parallel. The shrinking timeline forces defenders to adopt “machine-speed defense,” integrating threat intelligence, validation, and containment into continuous, automated workflows.
Rashish Pandey, Vice President – Marketing & Communications, APAC at Fortinet, captured the urgency: “Cybercrime is no longer an opportunistic activity; it is an industrialized system operating at machine speed. The road ahead will be shaped by how quickly defenders can adapt. Organizations will need integrated intelligence, continuous validation, and real-time response to stay ahead of adversaries who measure success by throughput, not novelty.”
Fortinet’s predictions also point to a more structured underground economy in 2026. Botnet and credential-rental services will become increasingly tailored, offering access packages sorted by industry and geography. Data will become a tradable commodity more rapidly than ever, aided by AI-powered enrichment. Black market platforms will introduce customer service layers, automated escrow, reputation scoring, and specialized service tiers—mirroring legitimate industries.
Defensive strategies must evolve just as quickly. Future-ready organizations will rely heavily on continuous threat exposure management frameworks, MITRE ATT&CK mapping, identity-first security, and automated validation workflows to reduce detection and response times to minutes. Managing non-human identities—including bots, automated agents, and AI models—will become central to preventing privilege escalation and large-scale data compromise.
Vivek Srivastava, Country Manager, India & SAARC at Fortinet, emphasized the need for an adaptive posture: “Static configurations and periodic assessments can’t keep pace with attackers who automate reconnaissance, privilege escalation, and extortion in minutes. What organizations need is a unified, adaptive security posture—one that fuses threat intelligence, exposure management, and incident response into a continuous, AI-enabled workflow.”
Fortinet also predicts a rise in international collaboration. Initiatives such as INTERPOL’s Operation Serengeti 2.0 and the Fortinet–Crime Stoppers International Cybercrime Bounty Program will help scale deterrence by encouraging public reporting and cross-border disruption.
Looking toward 2027, FortiGuard Labs anticipates the rise of agentic AI models and semi-autonomous swarm-based attacks that will redefine the speed and complexity of cyber operations. Supply chain attacks, especially those targeting AI-driven infrastructure, will intensify.
The report concludes that survival in this new era hinges on how effectively organizations integrate human expertise with machine intelligence. Those who unify automation, predictive analytics, and real-time orchestration will be best aligned to withstand industrialized cybercrime.
For the full analysis, sector insights, and defensive strategies, Fortinet’s complete 2026 Cyberthreat Predictions Report is available here.