How do you see regulatory expectations and compliance standards evolving in response to next year’ s threat landscape?

Especially for financial industry players, 2026 will bring a heavier compliance load in cyber and fraud domains. Business owners must keep an eye on evolving regulations. For example, banks may face new rules on how quickly they must report cyberincidents( in some regions, it’ s 72 hours or less) and how they handle customer fraud claims.

Data protection laws( like GDPR, state privacy laws) dictate how to manage and report data breaches. Ensure your company has the processes and technology to meet these requirements – this could mean investing in better log retention and forensics tools( to investigate incidents and provide reports), implementing stricter data encryption and access controls( to comply with privacy-bydesign), and conducting regular compliance audits or tabletop exercises with legal / compliance teams. It’ s wise to designate a point person or team for cybercompliance tracking, who can disseminate new requirements internally.

Non-compliance can result in fines, legal damages and loss of customer trust, so treating these regulations as a baseline for security efforts( rather than a ceiling) is prudent. Essentially, align your security improvements with the direction regulators are pushing – those areas( resilience, reporting, consumer protection) are a good bet for where to focus resources.

What technologies or innovations give you the most confidence in defending against next generation cyberthreats? practices. Cyberthreats are a common enemy, and collaboration is a force multiplier to counter them.

How important will workforce awareness and culture be in maintaining cyber-resilience as threats become more automated?

People are at the core of both causing and preventing breaches. In 2026, businesses should expand the scope of cybersecurity training for employees. Don’ t limit it to phishing email drills for office staff – include everyone who handles sensitive info or payments, which might mean frontline workers, call centre reps, executives, contractors, etc.

Update training content to cover new threats like social media scams, deepfake calls, and fraud tactics that target staff, because attackers may now single out HR or finance personnel with convincing ploys, not just the C-suite.

It’ s also worth conducting specialised workshops or tabletop exercises; for instance, running a simulation of an AI-generated voice call scam on your finance team to see if protocols are followed. These exercises can reveal policy gaps like does your company have a rule for confirming any fund transfer requests made over audio / video? Reward and reinforce good security behaviour to build a positive culture – celebrate teams that report phishing attempts or point out security improvements.

Ultimately, an alert and educated workforce is one of the best defences against both cyber-attacks and fraud. Given that human error or misjudgement is still a leading cause of breaches, this is an area where business owners should personally champion and invest.

I know you’ ve heard it before, but AI truly is a double-edged sword. What do they say? If you can’ t beat‘ em then join‘ em. Threat actors are leveraging AI to advance their tactics at alarming rates, and the only way to keep up with them is to leverage AI in defence strategies.

What gives me confidence in the ability to defend against next generation cyberthreats is that no business has to go it alone, it’ s a group effort. 2026 will likely see continued emphasis on public-private and industry partnerships for cyberdefence. Financial institutions, for example, benefit from participating in informationsharing groups like FS-ISAC. Closer to home, build relationships with local law enforcement or cybercrime units. Within industry groups, don’ t shy away from collaborating on best

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