In 2026, organizations face a challenging security landscape influenced by the increasing adoption of AI-powered tools and the convergence of cyber and physical security practices.
With novel AI models serving as both impactful defensive solutions and concerning threat accelerators, both C-suite executives and security teams must focus their attention on efforts to ensure security measures remain proactive, comprehensive and thoroughly stress-tested.
Below are five security questions every CEO should ask this year with these objectives in mind.
1. Are our cyber-physical systems resilient to cloud outages?
In 2025, several large-scale cloud service providers such as AWS, Microsoft and Cloudflare suffered notable outages that impacted millions of users. With almost 95% of businesses using some form of cloud services and many organizations hosting as much as 25% of their physical security infrastructure in the cloud, safeguarding against outages must be prioritized.
CEOs must work with their fellow executives and security leaders to ensure all cyber-physical systems are dependably resilient to cloud outages. Teams should consider adopting a hybrid architecture and implementing multi-cloud redundancy plans to help mitigate the impacts of outages suffered by major providers by eliminating single points of failure across key systems.
2. How do we verify the authenticity of critical security data?
While AI-powered solutions are providing significant benefits to modern organizations across both security and wider operational practices, they’re also being used by malicious actors to conduct increasingly sophisticated attacks. As AI can now be leveraged to fabricate security data like credentials and footage, infallible verification processes grow increasingly important.
Efforts must be made to build multi-layered strategies designed to defend against deepfakes and AI-fabricated security data fraud. Native agentic AI models should be trained to assist in the identification of suspicious data, but above all else, CEOs should commit to ensuring human judgement is the deciding factor in risk-facing matters by refining security leaders’ workflows.
3. Can our systems distinguish between real and false threats?
False alerts, fraudulent security data and operator fatigue continue to significantly impact key security operations across all kinds of modern businesses. With data suggesting that 45% of cyber and 98% of physical security alerts are considered false positives, businesses run the risk of operators becoming overly-fatigued and unable to identify genuine security threats.
C-suite executives should be taking meaningful steps to enable security systems operators to swiftly and reliably distinguish between real and false alerts. Effective measures will span organizational practices such as continuous alert tuning, as well as the adoption of AI-powered false alarm filtering software that’s been shown to reduce false positives by as much as 95%.
4. Where in our workflows must humans remain in the loop?
AI-driven automation is bringing many impactful benefits to businesses across most modern industries, so much so that over 80% consider AI to be a top priority in their business plans. However, an overreliance on AI-powered workflows can leave organizations vulnerable to significant threats as experienced human judgement is overlooked during responsive actions.
Business leaders must adopt a responsible approach to the utilization of smart, AI-powered technologies, such as AI security cameras, ensuring that these tools are used to enhance human capabilities, not replace them. In a security context, measures must be taken to ensure humans are engaged in the tuning of AI tools to ensure such solutions are assisting and not hindering human judgement.
5. Are we in compliance with the 2026 AI regulatory landscape?
As AI adoption continues to increase across most major industries, with almost 90% of global organizations using AI to support at least one business function, the regulatory landscape surrounding such technologies is rapidly changing. C-suite executives must remain informed of potential regulatory changes to help ensure adoption plans are compliant and achievable.
The AI regulatory landscape will likely differ from state to state and increase in complexity for international organizations in the coming years. To help ensure adoption and utilization plans remain compliant with evolving regulations, leaders must adopt a proactive approach to the application of new technologies centered on governance, transparency and human oversight.
As ever, security remains a top priority for CEOs across all industries. However, amid the increasing advancement of AI technologies and rising threat levels, ensuring clear visibility into security operations across all levels of leadership is more important than ever in 2026.
To improve resilience against novel threats and support the impactful adoption of emerging technologies, CEOs and their leadership teams must continuously refine existing security measures. By asking the right questions and remaining well-informed of emerging trends, business and security leaders can safely navigate an increasingly complex threat landscape.
