The CISO's 2026 Challenge: Why Traditional Security Can't Keep Up with AI Agents

2025 showed us a lot of uncomfortable truths. While security teams were figuring out how to govern chatbots, organizations started to realize (or be told) that the real value of AI lay in deploying autonomous AI agents for real-world impact.

Now it’s full speed ahead, and they're not waiting for security teams to catch up.

After spending 2025 working with security leaders across industries, we’ve watched this gap widen in real time. The implications for 2026 will be significant.

What 2025 Taught Us

The ROI is in agents doing boring things over time.

The real value of AI comes from agents observing, planning, and acting across extended timeframes with access to tools that allow for real-world impact. Think automated workflows that touch production systems, customer data, and financial transactions.

Because these agents act repeatedly and across systems, the risk jump from RAG-based chatbots to agentic systems is exponential, not linear. Take your time. Rushed deployments usually show up later as security gaps and costly rework.

The business won't wait for security.

We’re seeing a troubling pattern: security teams either blindly signing risk waivers they don't fully understand or approving insecure deployments because they have no actionable alternative.

The pressure is coming from all directions. Investment expectations are high. The fear of falling behind competitors is higher. Product and enterprise leaders are moving forward with or without security's blessing.

Security teams need to do two things simultaneously: understand the risks of these innovations AND leverage them to scale their own operations. One without the other isn't sustainable.

Traditional security org structures are breaking.

We're asking security teams to suddenly become experts in model security, AI supply chain risk, data science, non-deterministic system behavior, and AI red teaming—all of this on top of their existing responsibilities for cloud, AppSec, and network security.

The cognitive load is too much. To maintain security and progress, teams need to prioritize specialization.

What's Coming in 2026

Agents will dominate strategic priorities.

Every client roadmap we reviewed this year showed the same trajectory: chatbots in 2025, agents in 2026. Executive and investor mandates will push organizations to launch agents—likely custom-built within product teams and deployed through copilot and agent-builder platforms at the enterprise level.

Security AI tools will flood the market, but most will disappoint.

Get ready for an avalanche of vendors promising AI-powered security operations. However, we expect organizations will find:

• Most tools will lack the tacit knowledge of experienced practitioners. They'll fail in ways that expose the gap between marketing promises and operational reality.
• CISOs will be told they need five- or six-point solutions with no clear integration path and no way to measure outcomes.

Our prediction is that copilots will continue to deliver more value than fully autonomous security agents in the short term, but the providers framing their offerings as solutions and structuring them around SMEs will win. Human-in-the-loop isn't going away anytime soon.

New roles will emerge, and struggle to find their footing.

Expect to see the rise of the AI Security Leader, with titles like AI Security Manager, Director of AI Security, and even Chief AI Security Officers appearing on org charts. 

But these individuals will likely spend most of 2026 in the forming-storming-norming cycle—figuring out what kind of AI is deployed (sanctioned and shadow), what risks it creates, and what people, processes, and technology are needed to make real progress.

Key Points for 2026

2025 was the year AI started diffusing into the broader enterprise. Teams began separating signal from noise, finding paths to ROI. Startups are gaining ground on incumbents by offering AI-native solutions. All paths come with elevated security and privacy risks that most organizations aren't equipped to manage.

2026 will be a year of transition—probably slower than anyone wants, but inevitable nonetheless. The old playbooks for security strategy, org design, and operations are becoming obsolete.

Business will proceed anyway, and security will enter a difficult period marked by increased incidents, both external attacks and internal mishaps.

The CISOs who navigate this successfully will be the ones who embrace specialization, invest in AI-enabled capabilities, and build organizations that can move at the speed of innovation.

The rest will be playing catch-up for years.