By Darren Guccione, CEO and Co-Founder, Keeper Security
New technological advancements ushered in challenges and opportunities for cybersecurity leaders in 2025. As we look ahead to 2026, the increased adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the move toward post-quantum readiness are poised to impact the cybersecurity landscape.
Proliferation of Non-Human Identities
As organizations continue to adopt AI and automation, the number of Non‑Human Identities (NHIs), such as bots, service accounts and machine agents, has grown far beyond the size of the human workforce. These digital entities now interact with sensitive systems, make their own autonomous decisions, and often hold access to critical data. The result is a greatly expanded and often overlooked attack surface that few organizations are prepared to defend.
In 2026, security teams will recognize that visibility is the foundation of effective governance, particularly secrets governance for NHIs. You can’t protect what you can’t see. Without centralized, real‑time insight into who or what holds access to systems, neither policy enforcement nor automation can be trusted.
Leading organizations will focus on unifying identity controls across humans and machines, applying least privilege to every credential and automating credential rotation at scale. Continuous auditing and behavioral monitoring will become standard practice to identify misuse before it leads to compromise.
Zero trust and modern privileged access management solutions with robust secrets management capabilities will shift from an organizational best practice to an operational mandate. Security leaders who manage NHIs with the same rigor as employee accounts will avoid the mistakes that have historically fueled supply‑chain and insider-related breaches.
Identity is a deciding factor. When it is managed with precision, an organization’s entire security program becomes stronger, faster and far more predictable.
Transition to Quantum Resistant Cryptography
In 2026, the security community will continue to make steady progress toward quantum-resistant cryptography, but not at the pace some people expect. The biggest shift over the next year won’t come from a sudden breakthrough in quantum computing. Instead, it will stem from organizations recognizing that the transition to quantum resistant cryptography will be iterative and far more complex than many anticipated.
There’s growing pressure to adopt quantum-resistant algorithms quickly, but it’s important to remember that these primitives are still young. Even the NIST-selected schemes will undergo intense scrutiny as they move from academic constructions into widespread, real-world deployment. We should expect cryptanalysis, side-channel research and possibly algorithm updates – not because the approaches are fundamentally unsound – but because this is the normal maturation cycle of new cryptography.
In 2026, more organizations will acknowledge this and take a measured, engineering-driven approach to quantum-resistant cryptography. Rather than rushing to “quantum-proof” everything overnight, mature teams will focus on building the foundation for crypto agility: the ability to update or swap algorithms without redesigning entire systems or undergoing a years-long rollout. This capability is essential for long-term security, regardless of whether a cryptographically relevant quantum adversary emerges in five years or fifty.
We’ll also see a clearer separation between quantum-related risk and the broader cryptographic housekeeping many organizations have deferred. For most environments, the immediate threat is not a quantum computer breaking RSA tomorrow; it’s the lack of visibility into where and how cryptography is deployed today. Inventory, cryptographic key management and well-designed upgrade paths will matter more in 2026 than speculative timelines.
While 2026 won’t be the year quantum computing forces a sudden, industry-wide cryptographic pivot, it will be the year organizations start preparing realistically. The focus will shift to agility, disciplined engineering and replacing outdated assumptions with practical migration strategies. The quantum era is coming, and it will reward those who prepare carefully, not those who move the fastest.
The Year Ahead
Through strategic technology adoption and adherence to modern best practices, cybersecurity defenders can reap the benefits of innovative and emerging technology while avoiding the risks.
About the Author
Darren Guccione is the CEO and Co-Founder of Keeper Security
