Digital trust, at risk due to the advance of cybercrime

Next year, digital threats will not arrive with a red alert or as a visible virus that infects screens. New and old fraud tactics will be deployed throughout the virtual world in search of the most vulnerable consumer or employee and oversights will be taken advantage of by cybercriminals, who, for the most part, will turn to artificial intelligence (AI) to deceive in the blink of an eye, confirm a series of analyzes by firms specialized in the matter.

The threats in 2026 will come in a perfectly familiar voice call, a message signed by a real manager or a convincing video that no one will be able to distinguish from reality. By 2026, specialists warn, the problem will no longer be just defending systems, but deciding what and who can be trusted within the virtual universe.

Four different analyzes carried out by Kaspersky, NordVPN, Eset and Fortinet agree that the technological world is at an inflection point: AI has accelerated productivity and transformed daily life, but it is redefining the way fraud, disinformation and cybercrime operate.

Currently and towards 2026, specialists confirm, digital attacks no longer depend on exceptional technical skills or long preparation periods; it is now possible to carry them out in a matter of seconds and escalate to a large number of victims with a level of personalization that makes each attempt a more credible scam than the previous one.

What comes in 2026, experts point out, is not a distant or hypothetical future. It is the consolidation of an environment where the border between what is authentic and what is false becomes difficult to detect for the human eye and in which cybersecurity ceased to be a technical issue to become a central axis of economic, social and daily life.

Kaspersky predictions

According to Kaspersky, AI will be key for malicious actors to accelerate their attacks that previously required high levels of expertise. From the planning and development of tools to the preparation of infrastructure and the generation of fraudulent communications, this tool “will drastically reduce times and increase the professionalization of each phase of the attack.”

As a result, he maintained, the hacks They will be faster, more scalable and much harder to track, increasing the ability of cybercriminals to adapt, evade defenses and launch highly personalized campaigns against specific organizations or individuals.

At the same time, Kaspersky expressed concern about the fact that seven out of every 10 Mexicans, according to their own study, do not know that it is a deepfakewhich in practical terms is a type of fraud in which a video, image or audio file generated or altered by AI is used to make it appear real and be able to violate systems.

“The most disruptive thing in 2026 will not only be the technical capacity of the deepfakes or AI, but the direct impact they will have on business decision-making… The loss of certainty will transform the way operations are approved, risks are managed and trust is protected within an organization,” said Claudio Martinelli, general director for the Americas at Kaspersky.

Eset: intensive use of AI and evolution of ransomware

The cybersecurity firm Eset argued that the digital world is undergoing a transformation driven by the advancement of AI and this change accelerates innovation, but also amplifies the impact of threats and redefines the offensive capabilities of cybercrime.

Thus, the course of cybersecurity will be marked by the intensive use of AI and the evolution of information hijacking (ransomware) as a persistent threat.

“AI no longer only accelerates the attacker’s work: it multiplies its scope and reduces the technical requirements to enter the criminal ecosystem. What previously required specialized knowledge can today be executed in seconds. This new phase poses profound challenges, focused on the ease of scaling massive attacks with minimal investment and whose speed can exceed the detection capacity,” said Mario Micucci, computer security researcher at Eset Latin America.

That is why the company anticipates a greater number of hyper-personalized frauds through the technique of phishingwhich consists of deceiving through fake emails or messages that appear to come from legitimate sources, or campaigns to hijack information for companies generated through AI.

“Looking ahead to 2026, we could expect more stages of extortion, greater fragmentation of the criminal ecosystem, with smaller groups using AI to scale their operation, and faster, harder-to-attribute attacks.”

New tools: NordVPN

The NordVPN firm detailed that cybercriminals will begin the year with tools improved by AI, automation and more sophisticated techniques to deceive.

“As people become more reliant on digital services, smart devices and communications onlinethe threats that users face every day continue to grow in scale and complexity.”

One of the worrying issues is the loss of trust in the digital world, since as services migrate completely to the cloud, authentication processes are increasingly attractive to cybercriminals.

“Threats include deep-fakesvoice cloning, increasingly realistic synthetic people, automated chats for phishing and hyper-personalized attacks that make it difficult to distinguish what is true from what is false.

“Cybercriminals will create false digital identities, mixing real data with invented information, to access cloud accounts, open bank accounts and commit fraud for years before being detected. Thanks to AI, these fraudsters will increase their productivity, while fraudulent pages and services will become increasingly difficult to identify. As a consequence, trust in digital devices and services can be completely undermined.”

Cyber ​​attackers made with AI: Fortinet

Fortinet expects the emergence of AI-generated cyber attackers designed to assist cybercriminal operations, who will make it easier to steal credentials and monetize stolen data.

“Once attackers have gained access to stolen databases, AI tools will instantly analyze and prioritize them, determining which victims offer the highest return and generating personalized extortion messages accordingly. As a result, data will be converted into currency faster than before.”

Prevention

In the case of companies, the analyzes agree that digital defense in 2026 will be marked by the need to systematically verify information and integrate cybersecurity from the design of the processes.

Managing the use of AI, human supervision in critical decisions and incorporating clear technological governance policies are emerging as central elements to reduce operational, reputational and legal risks in an environment where automation also plays in favor of cybercrime.

For consumers, specialists warn that the main line of defense will be a basic understanding of the digital environment.

Faced with the growth of deepfakesvoice cloning and phishingdistinguishing the authentic from the false will be increasingly difficult, so the protection of personal data, the care of the information that is shared on digital platforms and recognizing that any person with an online presence is an objective is elementary, since next year digital security stops being optional and becomes a permanent condition.