GOODBYE 2025, HELLO 2026! CYBER MATURITY MOVES FROM CONFIDENCE TO PROOF

CYBERSECURITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST IS SHIFTING FROM POINT CONTROLS TO ECOSYSTEM RESILIENCE. ATTACKERS ARE EXPLOITING THE SEAMS BETWEEN CLOUD PLATFORMS, AI-DRIVEN APPLICATIONS, PARTNERS, AND SUPPLIERS — WHILE BOARDS AND INSURERS DEMAND PROOF THAT CRITICAL DATA CAN BE RECOVERED CLEANLY, QUICKLY, AND WITHIN JURISDICTION. IN 2026, CYBER MATURITY WILL BE MEASURED, NOT ASSUMED.

- 

If 2025 delivered a clear lesson for security leaders, it was that modern attacks no longer respect the tidy boundaries implied by organisational charts or technology stacks. Threats rarely arrive as a single, isolated strike against one system. Instead, they move through the spaces in between — connecting cloud platforms and SaaS environments, linking AI-driven applications with data stores, crossing organisational perimeters via suppliers, and exposing the gap between security assumptions and real-world system behaviour under pressure.

Across the region, this shift is already taking shape. Cyber resilience in 2026 will be defined less by standalone controls and more by the strength of the digital ecosystem and the operational capabilities supporting it. Attackers increasingly focus on the gaps between platforms, partners and data flows, where visibility is weaker and accountability is shared, rather than repeatedly attacking a single, well-fortified asset.

“Cyber maturity is only as strong as your weakest link,” says Gregg Petersen, Regional Director for the Middle East at Cohesity. It is a line that sounds familiar — almost obvious — until you view it through a 2025 lens. The weakest link is no longer just a missed patch, a careless click, or a stale credential. It might be a supplier’s cloud configuration, a partner’s data handling practice, a shadow AI workflow no one is monitoring, or an internal legacy system that quietly undermines an otherwise modern security programme.

Goodbye 2025, then. Hello to 2026 — the year when cyber maturity stops being a slogan and becomes something organisations must prove.

Confidence is high. Recoverability is harder

On paper, many organisations feel ready.

In practice, readiness is being challenged by the realities of distributed data, multi-cloud operations, and increasingly complex third-party relationships.