---
title: "How to Get Ready for 2026: The CISO/IT Playbook for What’s Coming"
description: See 2026’s top cyber risks and how CISOs/IT can prepare—passkeys, Conditional Access, SaaS governance, real restores, and audit-ready proof.
---

[The GRC Field Guide](https://entraguard.com/blog)

# [How to Get Ready for 2026: The CISO/IT Playbook for What’s Coming](https://entraguard.com/blog/essential-small-business-cybersecurity-measures-for-2024)

 Written by [Roland Rodriguez](https://entraguard.com/blog/author/roland-rodriguez) | 356-12

**What’s rising in 2026**

- **AI-driven social engineering and deepfakes.** Expect convincing voice/video lures, contextual spear-phish, and help-desk fraud aimed at MFA resets and SSO portals.
- **Identity as the primary attack surface.** Token theft, session hijacking, legacy auth, and over-privileged service accounts will remain the easiest path to data.
- **SaaS sprawl and shadow AI.** Unvetted apps and gen-AI tools will move data outside approved boundaries, complicating retention, DLP, and discovery.
- **Ransomware + data extortion 2.0.** Attackers target backups and identity providers first, then pressure with regulatory and customer notifications.
- **Regulatory pressure with real teeth.** SEC cyber disclosures, expanding state privacy laws, healthcare enforcement, and customer audits will demand *provable* controls.
- **Third-party concentration risk.** A handful of cloud, MSP, and identity vendors represent outsized blast radius; supplier incidents will be your incidents.
- **Email and collaboration threats shift left.** QR phishing, OAuth consent abuse, and malicious add-ins will outpace traditional filters.
- **Operational technology and connected devices.** “Office IT” and clinical/field devices are converging; patching and segmentation matter more.
- **Cyber insurance gets tougher.** Underwriters will ask for evidence of MFA, EDR, backups, and incident runbooks—not just policies.
- **Crypto-agility and key hygiene.** Post-quantum planning will appear in RFPs; 2026 is about inventory, rotation discipline, and crypto-agile roadmaps.

**How to prepare—practical moves that pay off**

- **Make MFA phish-resistant and default to passkeys.** Enforce FIDO2/hardware keys for admins and high-risk users. Kill legacy/basic auth everywhere.
- **Lock down Conditional Access and least privilege.** Baselines for device health, location, and risk; just-in-time elevation for admins; quarterly access reviews with owner sign-off.
- **Harden service accounts and automations.** Remove standing privileges, rotate secrets, prefer managed identities, and monitor OAuth grants.
- **Discover and govern SaaS/AI use.** Turn on SaaS discovery, review risky OAuth apps, enforce DLP for uploads/chats, and publish approved AI tools with usage guardrails.
- **Backups that actually restore.** Immutable copies, offline separation, routine restore drills, and documented RTO/RPO by system. Prove it with logs and screenshots.
- **EDR/XDR with human eyes.** Consolidate tooling, wire to a 24×7 MDR, and script first-hour actions. Tabletop your top three scenarios quarterly.
- **Email domain defense.** Enforce SPF/DKIM/DMARC (reject), brand indicators, and user-reporting that routes straight into triage playbooks.
- **Continuous control monitoring (CCM).** Automate evidence for encryption, retention, access reviews, backups, and incident response. Build an “evidence pack” you can export in minutes.
- **Third-party risk at speed.** Maintain a living vendor inventory, require MFA/EDR/backup attestations, and pre-authorize incident communication paths.
- **Runbooks mapped to regulations.** Tie each step to HIPAA/SOC 2/SEC criteria so every action creates proof (tickets, logs, approvals). Practice, tune, repeat.

**Signals you’re on track**

- Admins use **hardware-backed MFA**, not SMS.
- **Conditional Access** blocks unhealthy devices by default.
- Quarterly **access reviews** close out with owner sign-off and artifacts.
- **Restore tests** complete within target RTOs and are documented.
- Your **evidence pack** exports in under 10 minutes for audits, insurers, or customers.
- Tabletop exercises surface issues you fix within a sprint.

**From reactive to ready**

One of our clients made this shift by standardizing identity controls, retiring legacy auth, moving to passkeys for admins, discovering shadow SaaS, and turning their incident playbooks into click-ready runbooks mapped to SOC 2 and HIPAA. The payoff: faster triage, calmer audits, and real negotiating power with customers and insurers.

If you want help pressure-testing your 2026 readiness—identity first, evidence automated, recovery proven, we can help. We’ll bring Fractional CISO leadership, Cybersecurity Program Management, and Compliance as a Service to make your program resilient and provable.

[View full post](https://entraguard.com/blog/essential-small-business-cybersecurity-measures-for-2024)

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