The massive and accelerated implementation of artificial intelligence models has caused great challenges in terms of computer security. As generative AI tools have become more powerful, affordable and accessible, cybercriminals are increasingly adopting them to support all types of attacks.
While securing AI is possible with the right strategy and does not require completely redesigning infrastructure or complicating your security frameworks, threat actors use AI to refine their ransomware, phishing, zero-day exploits, or DDoS campaigns, expanding the attack surface.
Cybersecurity in 2026
Fastly, the cloud computing services firm, has published its four predictions that will redefine the AI-Powered Internet and Cybersecurity battlefield next year:
1.- AI infrastructure will be a new battlefield for CISOs
We are witnessing a race by the most agile companies to deploy new AI-powered tools and agentive products. This means that in 2026, cybersecurity managers will have to protect a new and constantly evolving attack surface.
The crucial point is that these AI tools are highly privileged and deeply integrated into corporate systems. Therefore, a successful attack against AI infrastructure will have very serious consequences, given the magnitude of access and control that these systems typically have.
Although security leaders approach AI with optimism, the reality is that AI will significantly increase the attack surface. And while defenders will see benefits from advances in AI, this expansion will end up giving attackers an advantage.
In this context, leaders must focus on how to effectively defend the AI infrastructure itself. This means prioritizing the security of these systems, investing in more robust defenses, and fostering interdepartmental collaboration to mitigate emerging risk. They must have capabilities to discover AI endpoints in their infrastructure, addressing unmanaged shadow AI that creates new targets for attacks, and ensuring that agentive access is logged and complies with least privilege principles.
2.- An internet powered by AI bots will test the foundations of security
The rapid deployment of AI agents and bots is redefining how we interact with the digital environment. By 2026, bots from leading LLM providers will not only consume enormous amounts of training content, but will also mediate an increasing number of interactions with websites and services.
This transformation is blurring the line between human and bot activity, which will have significant implications for security and the Internet in general.
The problem is that when systems can no longer accurately distinguish between human users and AI agents, traditional authentication and access control methods will fail. The premise is simple: you can’t protect what you can’t see.
In this scenario, attacks driven by malicious bots will be much more difficult to identify, and it will become extremely complex to respond to them and filter harmful traffic without the risk of blocking legitimate and business-necessary bot traffic.
3.- AI editors and crawlers will forge a new alliance to boost the AI-Powered Internet
AI companies are continually looking for ways to incorporate their tools into daily life, and much of this change is happening on the open web. AI crawlers already make up the majority of bot traffic, and they are reshaping the way the Internet is accessed and experienced.
In 2026, publishers and AI crawlers will forge a new alliance where both parties can coexist. This relationship is one of mutual necessity: publishers need search engines to generate traffic, and AI crawlers need content to build their models and feed their Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) queries.
Agentic commerce is one area where this dynamic is emerging, with e-commerce site owners and AI companies collaborating to transition to an AI-powered customer journey. Publishers will work with AI companies to establish a balance between openness and control on the Internet, fostering an open and robust web ecosystem that benefits both publishers and creators.
4.- The success of AI will depend on the collaboration between development and security teams
As the race to develop and deploy AI-powered tools continues in 2026, organizations that foster close collaboration between development and security teams will come out ahead.
Development teams are under pressure to innovate and deploy AI quickly, while the security task is to identify and fix vulnerabilities before deployment.
When developers and security professionals work together from the early stages of AI model-driven development, they can implement appropriate safeguards and mitigate potential security gaps before they arise. This new developer-security partnership model will result in a safer and more reliable AI ecosystem, where innovation and security go hand in hand.
