Through 2025, it became increasingly clear that cybercrime no longer behaves like a predictable market of isolated actors. Instead, it has fused with geopolitics, business transformation and the accelerating race toward artificial intelligence. The year’s biggest incidents, from mass-scale data theft to GPS jamming that disrupted logistics across the Middle East, showed organisations that today’s threats exploit everything from the cloud platforms we depend on to the instability we live with. And nowhere is this interplay more visible than in the Middle East, where the ambition to build world-leading AI economies is unfolding against a backdrop of regional tension and global competition for talent. This convergence is shaping a cybersecurity landscape that will look markedly different as we enter 2026.
Bubbling closer to the surface
The geopolitical turbulence of 2025 created conditions where cyber operations became more visible, more experimental and more intertwined with physical conflict. GPS interference affected aircraft and ships navigating the Levant and the Eastern Mediterranean. Disinformation campaigns spiked around conflict zones. The FBI’s unusually transparent disclosure of Salt Typhoon (an extensive foreign intrusion campaign targeting more than 200 telecom operators across 80 countries) only reinforced how deeply embedded advanced persistent threats have become.
“According to the FBI’s account, attackers could trace user movements, intercept communications, and map infrastructure with near-military precision.”
These revelations matter because they mark a shift from speculation to public acknowledgement. The cyberwar that has simmered for a decade is gaining shape and definition. Amid ongoing conflicts and rising global competition, as the region moves into 2026, these operations will not disappear. Instead, they will set the stage for everything else that is coming.
Criminal ecosystems begin to resemble industries
The geopolitical picture bleeds directly into the criminal one. When nation-state actors push the boundaries of stealth and persistence, criminal groups tend to follow the same playbook — shaping the tools, marketplaces and alliances that feed downstream attacks. Over the past few years, ransomware gangs and malware-as-a-service groups have taken on the structure of proper companies, complete with customer support, HR roles and profit-sharing models.
Now the ecosystem is consolidating. Groups like DragonForce have been absorbing smaller factions and forming coalitions that resemble corporate mergers. It’s part organised-crime expansion, part strategic business scaling. In contrast, collectives such as Shiny Lapsus Spider operate more like creative collaborations driven by shared ideology rather than strict hierarchy. But regardless of structure, the same tension applies: size creates capability, but it also creates vulnerability. This evolution matters because it directly shapes attacker behaviour, and that behaviour is already shifting in a far more consequential direction.
The real shift: intrusions without malware
Whether driven by states or by criminals, attackers are steadily abandoning malware in the traditional sense. In 2026, the most damaging breaches will increasingly rely on what organisations already trust: identity systems, APIs, cloud consoles, remote management tools and native system binaries. A stolen session token, a compromised identity or a misconfigured API now offers more operational power than a bespoke piece of malware ever did.
This “living off the land” approach allows attackers to blend in with legitimate activity. They escalate privileges through cloud-native workflows, move laterally using built-in utilities, and execute tasks that appear legitimate to most controls. It is subtle, fast and extremely difficult to detect with traditional tooling. And because these techniques are so effective, they are becoming the default. In many ways, this shift is the logical outcome of the trends shaping both the geopolitical and criminal spheres: stealth is rewarded, automation is accelerating, and visibility gaps are widening.
Combating threats with community-scale defence
This is where defenders need to evolve just as quickly. When attackers automate reconnaissance across cloud, edge and virtualised environments, no single vendor or enterprise can see enough of the picture anymore. What appears as harmless telemetry for one organisation may be the missing puzzle piece for another. That is why 2026 will mark the rise of community-driven intelligence platforms as a core layer of defence. When teams share signals, early indicators crystalise much faster. What used to take weeks, waiting for a patch, advisory or vendor report, can compress into hours when the industry exchanges patterns, anomalies and new tradecraft openly. These platforms also level the playing field. Many organisations lack in-house expertise in identity abuse or cloud intrusions, but the community does. Shared intelligence lets everyone benefit from that collective experience.
The coming convergence
If 2025 exposed just how intertwined technology, geopolitics and crime have become, 2026 will be the year these forces fully converge. The threats will grow more subtle, more coordinated and more identity-driven. But the solutions will grow more collective too. In a world defined by interdependence, defence becomes a shared endeavour.
This opinion piece is authored by Ziad Nasr, General Manager, Acronis Middle East.
