AI will be one of the core threats to cybersecurity in 2026, with more than 8,000 data breaches and around 345 million records exposed globally in the first half of 2025 alone, according to Experian's latest forecast. Meanwhile, Experian and Fortune report that AI-driven fraud will continue to skyrocket in 2026, with losses already reaching about $12.5 billion in the previous year, and deep counterfeiting and smart phishing proliferating rapidly on financial, e-commerce and social platforms. According to the reports, AI tools are "democratizing" fraud capabilities, making it possible for low-skill attackers to batch-generate highly realistic text messages, voices and synthetic videos, making it difficult for traditional anti-fraud rules to recognize these new attack patterns in time.
