After a few years of widespread artificial intelligence adoption, 2026 will mark the tipping point when artificial intelligence moves beyond influencing how we work and starts fundamentally reshaping the enterprise itself.
AI is now embedded at every layer of an organization: from workflows and applications to customer experience, DevOps, IT automation, and strategic decision-making. But governance, security controls, and identity protections have not kept pace. The result is a growing set of blind spots, rapidly expanding attack surfaces, and a widening speed gap between defenders and increasingly automated adversaries.
Delinea leaders predict that 2026 will force a new identity security playbook to be built for a world where AI systems, machine identities, and autonomous agents outnumber humans, operate at machine speed, and increasingly make decisions beyond direct human oversight.
Below, Delinea’s executives share their top insights on the identity-driven shifts they see reshaping enterprise security in the year ahead.
Identity will become the control plane for AI risk
Predicted by Art Gilliland, CEO
In 2026, artificial intelligence will expose a hard truth security teams can no longer ignore: identity, not networks or endpoints, is the primary control surface for AI-driven risk
As AI systems, agents, and machine identities begin acting autonomously, making decisions, and accessing sensitive data at machine speed, traditional security models will break under the strain.
Organizations that continue to treat identity as a static access problem will fall behind attackers who exploit AI-powered automation, credential abuse, and identity sprawl. The enterprises that succeed will be those that re-architect identity security as a continuous, data-aware control plane, one built to govern humans, machines, and AI with the same rigor, visibility, and accountability.
Shadow AI will become the new identity crisis
Predicted by Pierre Mouallem, CISO
Shadow IT has plagued security teams for years, but 2026 will be the year shadow AI overtakes it as the top visibility and breach risk.
As CEOs push for rapid AI adoption, nearly every department is experimenting with AI tools, often without security guardrails. More than half of organizations run into shadow AI issues monthly, and that figure is rising as easy-to-use AI systems spread across business units.
Unlike traditional shadow IT, shadow AI is both more powerful and more dangerous. Employees can deploy advanced models trained on sensitive company data, and these tools often store or transmit privileged credentials, API keys, and service tokens without oversight. Even sanctioned AI tools become risky when improperly configured or connected to internal workflows.
This creates a new identity blind spot.
CISOs face a dual challenge:
- Discovering AI use across the organization, not just securing the tools they know about
- Governing AI in a way that enables safe adoption instead of blocking it outright
The priority isn’t just securing AI. It’s finding it. Visibility will be the defining challenge of the year.
AI will turn smaller nation-states into cyber superpowers
Predicted by Art Gilliland
AI is radically lowering the barrier to sophisticated offensive cyber capabilities. In 2026, that shift will reshape the geopolitical threat landscape.
Smaller nations and proxy groups no longer need massive intelligence infrastructures or elite cyber armies to execute high-impact attacks. AI-enabled tooling allows them to:
- Weaponize stolen credentials at scale
- Generate synthetic personas and deepfakes for influence operations
- Automate reconnaissance and vulnerability exploitation
- Target critical infrastructure remotely using AI-assisted tactics
We’ve already seen early signs of how asymmetric cyber power can play out. Ukraine showed the world that a smaller state can inflict significant damage remotely using advanced cyber tactics.
With AI-driven automation, sophisticated playbooks previously reserved for top-tier nation-states become accessible to countries—and non-state actors—with far fewer resources. This levels the playing field and expands the number of threat actors capable of meaningful, identity-focused cyber aggression.
In 2026, expect more geopolitical disruptions driven by identity warfare, synthetic information, and AI-enabled critical infrastructure targeting.
Machine identity sprawl will reach a tipping point
Predicted by Phil Calvin, Chief Product Officer
If 2025 was the year organizations embraced AI, 2026 will be the year they lose track of it.
Machine identities—from workloads and service accounts to IoT devices and AI agents—already vastly outnumber human identities. Most operate with excessive privileges. Many run unnoticed and unmonitored. And nearly all are essential to keeping systems running.
Machine identities have become the primary source of privilege misuse, and their growth shows no sign of slowing. As AI-driven automation accelerates and IoT ecosystems proliferate, organizations will hit a governance tipping point.
2026 will force security teams to confront a tough reality. Identity-first security can’t stop with humans. Machines often carry more privilege, access more systems, and create more risk than people do.
The organizations that thrive will be those that extend identity security, least privilege, and lifecycle management to every non-human identity without slowing development or operations.
Regulatory pressure will expand to Machine and AI Governance
Predicted by Pierre Mouallem
As AI continues to influence business operations, regulators will focus on how organizations authorize, monitor, and audit AI-driven systems.
In 2026, compliance expectations will expand significantly across major frameworks. Compliance frameworks such as SOX, the UK Corporate Governance Code, and the EU AI Act, along with evolving standards from NIST and ISO, will expand to cover “machine identity hygiene” and AI decision-making transparency.
AI isn’t just a technological risk; it’s becoming a corporate accountability risk
Machine governance will move from a technical issue to a board-level priority. Executives must show they can audit AI behavior, enforce identity controls, and prove the integrity of AI-driven actions.
What CISOs need to do now
2026 will demand a fundamentally different approach to identity security. CISOs and security leaders should prioritize:
1. Visibility into all AI usage, sanctioned or not
Shadow AI must be discovered before it can be controlled.
2. Machine identity lifecycle management
Apply least privilege, credential rotation, monitoring, and governance to every non-human identity.
3. Defensive AI to close the attacker speed gap
AI-native threats require AI-powered detection and response.
4. Continuous identity validation
Every action—human or machine—must be verified in real time.
5. Governance readiness for new regulatory requirements
Auditability, explainability, and machine identity hygiene will become essential.