Full transcript
[[00:05.6]
Thank you for joining. Today's video focused on global cyber risk in 2026. My name is James Burr and I'm a Senior Regional Analyst on Everbridge's Global Insights team. Just a quick disclaimer up front, I'm not a cyber expert and what I'm sharing today is a high level overview based on publicly available reporting and trend analysis focused on what it could mean for business risk.
[00:30.0]
Looking back at 2025, the big story wasn't necessarily brand new attack types, it was attackers operating at scale. Public reporting suggests ransomware Stayed high and often hit sectors where downtime is expensive like manufacturing, health care and parts of critical infrastructure.
[00:48.3]
At the same time, extortion sometimes lean more on data theft. So even if systems recover disclosure, legal and reputation exposure can still be significant. Another consistent theme reporting was identity compromise credentials, multi factor authentication or MFA fatigue session theft because it's a scalable way in and can look like normal user activity.
[01:14.4]
As we look towards 2026, many analysts expect a potential speed up effect, so artificial intelligence enabled automation and more cloud and software as a service or SaaS interdependence could expand the attack surface, especially if tools and integrations roll out faster than governance.
[01:34.1]
Reporting also points to continued focus on identity led intrusions and ongoing concern around operational technology or OT and industrial environments where the downside could include operational disruption, adding high volumes of vulnerabilities and tightened regulatory expectations.
[01:54.2]
And the overall risk discussion shifts from IT issue to business continuity and accountability. So what's the practical takeaway? Based on common themes in public guidance, organizations may get the most leverage by focusing on measurable resilience.
[02:10.8]
This ultimately means hardened identity, reducing over permissioned access, ensuring backups and recovery are tested, tightened segmentation, especially between IT and ot, and improving visibility into third party dependencies.
[02:26.9]
But the overall goal isn't perfection, it's more about reducing blast radius and improving recovery speed. So that's the quick snapshot. I'd be more than happy to further discuss what these trends could mean for your specific sector, or operating footprint in greater detail.
[02:43.7]
Thank you for listening.
