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VMBlog | Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2026: What Industry Experts Want You to Know

By David Marshall

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and if the last twelve months have proven anything, it’s that the threat landscape isn’t slowing down to observe it. From AI-powered phishing campaigns and deepfake-driven social engineering to the steady drumbeat of ransomware attacks hitting hospitals, schools, and municipalities, security teams have had precious little downtime in 2026. This annual observance, now in its third decade, remains one of the industry’s best excuses to pause, take stock, and ask: are we actually getting safer, or just busier?

To mark the occasion, VMblog reached out to security leaders, CISOs, researchers, and vendors across the industry to get their take on where things stand. What follows is a round up of that commentary — perspectives on the trends shaping defense strategies, the mistakes still tripping up organizations of every size, and the practical steps security teams can take to close the gap between awareness and actual resilience.

As always with our round ups, the goal isn’t a single unified message — it’s a snapshot of where the industry’s collective head is at right now, in the experts’ own words.

Jeremy Herr, Senior Director of Security Operations at Abrigo

The use of autonomous AI agents will continue to expand. Environments containing many agents that interact with one another will become commonplace. We will see organizations implementing Citizen Builder programs that fuel further AI innovation and agent sprawl.

Most builders won’t know the specific permissions their agents need to operate, autonomously or otherwise, so they ask for everything. Even if they do know, the permissions required are broad. Many won’t even know what an SDLC is, let alone understand the concept of building securely. It just “has to work,” and quickly.

The challenges of maintaining least-privilege and need-to-know are amplified by the era of autonomous AI and the business pressure to do more with it. We now find ourselves in the next generation of nonhuman identity management.

While this is the next evolution of identity governance, best practices still apply. We must identify which permissions are truly required, how they are limited, and how to prevent privilege creep. This has always been one of our greatest challenges in cybersecurity. Today, we have more places to meet that challenge and a dramatically expanded footprint that requires accountability and auditability. When an AI agent acts, can you identify who approved it? What about who owns it and who is accountable if the agent makes a mistake, which it inevitably will? When reviewing logs, are you able to identify which agent, among potentially thousands, performed an action (non-repudiation)?

Don’t overlook the obligation to monitor and audit your ever-expanding AI agent footprint. Don’t be in a position where you can’t produce log evidence for a regulator or answer their questions comprehensively because of a failure to log appropriately.

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To see the full article featuring Abrigo, visit VMblog, “Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2026: What Industry Experts Want You to Know.”