January 2026

Key cyber trends straight from the desk of Cyber Intelligence

• Supply chain compromise and third-party breaches – in 2025 high-profile compromises of SaaS firms and managed service providers resulted in exposure of downstream customer data and/or enabled pivoting and lateral movement.
  • So what? Increasingly, patching and risk management is not just a matter of having visibility over one’s own tech stack, but also understanding third-party platform dependencies and use of open-source components.
• Employees misused AI, threat actors abused it – organisations struggled to keep up with and regulate employees’ use of advancing AI technologies. Threat actors also developed their own malicious LLMs with applications in authoring phishing scripts, automating exploit development, generating deepfakes and conducting research and reconnaissance.
  • So what? As organisations consider adopting new AI tools, they should ensure alignment between business strategy teams and those involved in security, risk management and compliance.
• Expanding scale and impact of attacks from ideologically motivated actors – 2025 saw a growing number of ideologically motivated groups targeting operational technology and industrial control systems in critical infrastructure, including in AUNZ.
  • So what? Organisations must maintain incident response plans, audit network segmentation efficacy, ensure complete backups, and have appropriate DDoS protections in place. Be ready for further developments in OT targeting in 2026.

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