April 29, 2026 — Analysis of cyber attacks in NCC Group’s Q1 2026 Threat Pulse has found that AI is the biggest threat posed to CISOs in the coming years. Cyber attacks increased by 22% month-on-month in March 2026, highlighting the growing impact of AI weaponization and poorly governed adoption. Human involvement is now central to ensuring both responsible use and sustained operational resilience. AI as a malicious actor The sophisticated potential that AI poses to malicious attacks is being rapidly adapted by all types of threat actors, from nation states to hacktivists. In early 2026, politically motivated, AI-generated deepfake propaganda was used in the Ukraine-Russia war -likely to become a more popular tactic used by threat actors with dozens of elections taking place globally in 2026. In social engineering tactics, AI, commonly Google Gemini, is being used to help threat actors accurately translate messages and improve their legitimacy. The cost of developing AI software is declining, and we can expect to see threat actors taking advantage of its dynamic decision-making capabilities at all stages of the attack chain. AI practice insecurity A growing over-reliance on vibe coding, which has been found to generate unsecure code, is cause for serious security concerns. The practice of using generative AI platforms to create passwords is also worrying, as how they are trained can lead them to produce passwords that that appear strong but are easy to predict. When CISOs are mapping the threat which AI poses, they need to assess their own internal security hygiene in the same way they analyse external threats. Matt Hull, VP of Cyber Intelligence and Response at NCC Group, said, “AI is accelerating cyber risk in both scale and complexity, and underestimating this shift will quickly leave businesses of all sizes exposed. Not only are CISOs facing