Best Practices for Automated Systems in 2026
Local networks are tempting targets since they are deemed less defended, filled with rich data, and vital to the fabric of our society. 2026 might see an unsafe convergence of increasing attack focus and lessening protective capacity, with the MS-ISAC being one of the couple of companies placed to assist reduce the risk at scale.
While the current open LLMs are not proper RAGs, there is likely to be a shift in 2026 toward RAG designs. These models integrate skilled data with external sources to produce more timely and appropriate responses than a design could produce by itself. From a risk point of view, this could present new risks in the form of model poisoning, sensitive data leak, and exposure of exclusive data if not executed carefully and if those external knowledge sources are not carefully managed.
2026 is an election year, suggesting that. Functional Technology (OT) and important infrastructure will experience a high-impact cyber event, most likely tied to a geopolitical conflict, which will finally activate. after another significant SaaS failure interferes with emergency or civil services, speeding up multi-cloud and "cloud failover" architectures. even as they are increasingly called upon to carry higher duty in protecting their jurisdictions and critical facilities against a growing wave of advanced cyber risks.
