When we speak with Australian and New Zealand CEOs about cyber security today, the conversation has fundamentally shifted. We're no longer discussing whether threats will evolve, but how quickly we can adapt to an intelligence landscape that's changing faster than ever before. As we head into 2026, organisations across the Tasman face a pivotal year where the gap between prepared and unprepared will become stark.
1. AI Becomes the Great Equaliser (For Both Sides)
2026 will be the year AI moves from experimental to operational in cyber security, on both sides of the fight. We're going to see agentic AI fundamentally lower the barrier to entry for attackers. Where threat actors previously needed technical expertise and time, AI will obliterate these prerequisites. Attacks that once took weeks to orchestrate will happen in hours.
But here's the opportunity: defenders who embrace AI-native security operations will finally pull ahead. For organisations operating with the same cyber security skills gap everyone's facing (we're talking 4.8 million workers short globally), AI agents will provide the force multiplier security teams desperately need. Our SOC operations will shift from drowning in alert fatigue to having AI agents triage, correlate and respond autonomously.
What this means for trans-Tasman businesses: If you're not integrating AI into your security operations now, you're not just behind, you're vulnerable. The organisations that win in 2026 will be those who implement AI-driven threat detection and response before their competitors do.
Forget perimeter security. In 2026, identity itself will be under siege. We're already seeing AI-generated deepfakes capable of impersonating executives in video calls. By mid-2026, we expect enterprises to abandon facial recognition and other vulnerable verification methods as deepfakes render them unreliable.
The challenge extends beyond humans. With the explosion of AI agents in business operations, we're facing a new category of risk: non-human identities. Every AI agent your organisation deploys needs authentication, and a weakness in one agent's identity can create cascading vulnerabilities across your entire operation.
What this means for trans-Tasman businesses: Multi-factor authentication is table stakes. You need adaptive, intelligence-driven identity security that can distinguish between legitimate users, compromised accounts and AI-generated imposters. Zero trust isn't just a framework anymore, it's survival.
Let's be direct: Australia and New Zealand's position in the Indo-Pacific means we're both in the crosshairs. The ASD has made it clear that state-sponsored actors from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are actively targeting infrastructure across both nations. In 2026, these operations will intensify.
China-nexus operations will continue to outpace other nations in volume, prioritising stealthy operations and aggressively targeting edge devices. Russia's cyber operations will shift from tactical support for Ukraine to long-term global strategic goals. Iranian activity will deliberately blur the lines between espionage, disruption and hacktivism. And North Korea will expand their IT worker operations whilst conducting financial crimes to fund the regime.
The NCSC in New Zealand is seeing exactly what the ASD is seeing in Australia: state-sponsored actors are actively targeting both nations. Of the 5,995 reports the NCSC received in their 2024/25 financial year, 331 were incidents of potential national significance. That's a substantial threat landscape for a nation of five million people.
The hacktivist surge is real. In October 2024, New Zealand saw DDoS attacks against financial sector organisations coinciding with pro-Russian campaigns targeting Western governments. In June 2025, when the New Zealand Government pledged more financial support to Ukraine, multiple sectors including government, transport and water were hit with DDoS campaigns.
Here's what concerns us: whilst these attacks have had varied success to date, we've also seen low-impact incidents against operational technology claimed by hacktivist groups. When OT is less protected, actors setting out to create a nuisance can end up causing significant damage beyond what they expected. The unintended consequences could be severe.
What this means for trans-Tasman businesses: If you operate across both countries, you're facing coordinated threat actors who view Australia and New Zealand as aligned Western targets. Critical infrastructure operators need to take the ASD's CI Fortify guidance seriously. Can you isolate your vital systems for three months? Can you completely rebuild them if needed?
For all businesses, the NCSC assesses that government, financial, news, utilities, IT and retail sectors are most likely to be targeted because of the potential for noticeable disruption. If you're in these sectors, implementing the Essential Eight at maturity level three should be your baseline, not your aspiration.
Here's a prediction specific to 2026: we're going to see a surge in supply chain compromises, and the trans-Tasman region is particularly vulnerable. Both the ASD and New Zealand's NCSC are highlighting that threat actors are exploiting supply chains, hidden dependencies and organisational blind spots to cause impact.
The NCSC data shows that reconnaissance to gather credentials represents 16% of observed attack techniques, with actors also exploiting public-facing applications and using spearphishing links as initial access vectors. These aren't sophisticated nation-state techniques, they're the basics being executed at scale.
At least two known hacktivist groups active against New Zealand were likely created as an unattributable platform for conducting state-sponsored malicious cyber activities. This blurring of lines between hacktivism, cybercrime and state actors makes attribution harder and defence more complex.
What this means for trans-Tasman businesses: Third-party risk management becomes critical in 2026. Every vendor, every software update, every managed service provider in your supply chain is a potential entry point. You need visibility into your entire supply chain, continuous monitoring and the ability to quickly isolate compromised suppliers. Supply chain transparency isn't just about compliance, it's about survival.
2026 is when global regulatory fragmentation becomes every organisation's problem. The EU AI Act goes into full effect in August, requiring organisations to classify AI systems by risk and complete conformity assessments. Meanwhile, US states like California, Colorado and New York are creating their own patchwork of AI regulations.
For Australian and New Zealand businesses operating globally or using international AI platforms, this creates a compliance nightmare. Add to this the acceleration of data sovereignty mandates worldwide, China's PIPL enforcement maturing, and Europe's DORA requirements for operational resilience, and you've got a perfect storm of compliance obligations.
Here's what many organisations miss: penalties for non-compliance can reach up to 10% of global revenue. We'll see the first major fines hit in 2026, and they'll be substantial enough to tank share prices.
What this means for trans-Tasman businesses: Compliance can't be an afterthought. Australian businesses need frameworks that handle the SOCI Act, Privacy Act reforms and Essential Eight requirements. New Zealand organisations face their own regulatory landscape. For businesses operating across both markets, you need governance that can navigate multiple jurisdictions simultaneously. This is where having a comprehensive cyber security partner becomes critical.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: most successful breaches in 2026 won't come from sophisticated zero-days. They'll come from known vulnerabilities that organisations simply haven't patched. And AI is making this worse.
Adversaries are now using AI to reverse engineer vendor security updates into exploitable code within hours. The window between a security bulletin being published and active exploitation is collapsing. Organisations still running scheduled monthly patching windows are going to get burned.
The data tells the story. The ASD's figures show that 38% of incidents involve valid accounts, 31% involve user execution, and known vulnerabilities remain the easiest entry point. The New Zealand NCSC's assessment is equally clear: known weaknesses and unpatched vulnerabilities are providing threat actors with easy access.
Both countries are seeing the same attack patterns: credential gathering, exploiting public-facing applications, spearphishing and brute force attacks. These aren't exotic threats, they're organisations failing at the basics.
What this means for trans-Tasman businesses: Your security update process needs to evolve from scheduled patching to a continuous delivery approach for high-severity vulnerabilities. This requires mature vulnerability management, automated patch deployment, and most importantly, visibility into your entire attack surface. You can't patch what you can't see.
The Essential Eight remains the gold standard for both Australian and New Zealand organisations. If you're not at maturity level three across all eight strategies, you're leaving the door open.
The attack surface for businesses has grown 67% since 2022, driven by cloud migration, hybrid infrastructure and AI tool proliferation. In 2026, this expansion accelerates as organisations deploy masses of AI agents across their operations.
Every new SaaS application, every AI plugin, every remote worker endpoint, every IoT device adds another potential entry point. Shadow AI usage is already exposing intellectual property and customer data, and it's only getting worse as employees adopt micro-AI extensions and tools outside IT visibility.
The NCSC data shows that threat actors are compromising accounts, building botnets and conducting DDoS attacks with network floods. The attack surface isn't just expanding, it's becoming more complex and harder to defend.
What this means for trans-Tasman businesses: Attack surface management becomes non-negotiable. You need continuous discovery and monitoring of all assets, not quarterly reviews. Zero trust architecture needs to move from concept to actual implementation, built directly into your platform architecture. Assume compromise, verify everything, limit blast radius.
Don't believe anyone who says ransomware is declining. Modern extortion in 2026 will be more sophisticated, more targeted and harder to defend against. Attackers are using AI to bypass multi-factor authentication, they're developing new tactics faster than we can document them, and they're getting better at targeting high-value data.
The commercialisation of cybercrime means that even unsophisticated actors can now purchase ransomware-as-a-service, complete with support desk and payment portals. Both the ASD and New Zealand's NCSC are highlighting that the commercialisation of cybercrime means cybercriminals have more tools available. The barrier to entry has never been lower, which means the volume of attacks will surge.
The NCSC's data shows data encryption for impact as a common attack technique. Organisations across both Australia and New Zealand are being hit, and the impacts are material.
What this means for trans-Tasman businesses: Your backup strategy needs to assume that attackers will find and encrypt your backups. Immutable backups, offline copies and regular restoration testing aren't optional. Neither is a genuine incident response plan that you've actually practised. For organisations operating across both countries, your incident response plan needs to account for different regulatory notification requirements in each jurisdiction.
Here's my final prediction, and it's a positive one: 2026 will see increased cyber security coordination between Australia and New Zealand paying dividends for prepared organisations.
Both countries are experiencing the same threat actors, the same attack patterns and the same geopolitical pressures. The intelligence sharing between the ASD and New Zealand's NCSC is providing earlier warning of emerging threats. The alignment on frameworks like the Essential Eight and similar risk-based approaches creates efficiency for businesses operating across both markets.
For organisations that embrace this trans-Tasman alignment, there's a competitive advantage. Rather than managing divergent security approaches in each country, you can leverage a unified strategy that meets the requirements of both jurisdictions whilst benefiting from shared threat intelligence.
What this means for trans-Tasman businesses: If you're operating in both markets, partner with security providers who understand both regulatory environments and can provide coverage across both countries. The ability to have consistent security operations, unified incident response and aligned compliance frameworks reduces complexity whilst improving your security posture.
Australian and New Zealand businesses face a stark choice in 2026: adapt or become a cautionary tale. The organisations that will thrive are those who recognise that cyber security isn't a cost centre, it's a competitive advantage. When you can innovate faster because your security posture is strong, when you can win contracts because you meet compliance requirements that competitors can't, when you can respond to incidents in minutes rather than weeks, security becomes a business enabler.
But getting there requires more than buying tools. It requires comprehensive cyber security partnership that bridges boardroom strategy with operational excellence, that combines Australian and New Zealand regulatory expertise with global threat intelligence, and that delivers continuous, adaptive protection as the threat landscape evolves.
The threat landscape doesn't respect borders. State-sponsored actors targeting Australia are targeting New Zealand. Hacktivist campaigns hit both countries simultaneously. Ransomware groups don't discriminate based on your postcode. The threats are coordinated, so your defence needs to be as well.
At Insicon Cyber, we've evolved specifically to meet this challenge. From advisory strategy to 24/7 managed security operations, we're positioned to help organisations across the Tasman not just survive 2026, but use it as a launching pad for secure growth. The threat landscape is evolving. Make sure your cyber security partner evolves with it.