Pune: Seqrite, the enterprise security arm of Quick Heal Technologies Limited, a global provider of cybersecurity solutions, has flagged concerning cybersecurity trends that may emerge in 2026. The company’s recently unveiled India Cyber Threat Report 2026, prepared meticulously by researchers at Seqrite Labs, India’s largest malware analysis facility, reveals that 2026 will mark the emergence of cognitive threats, as a new class of AI-augmented attacks capable of mimicking human behavior with unprecedented precision and autonomy.
Researchers at Seqrite Labs warn that threat actors will increasingly leverage generative artificial intelligence to automate reconnaissance, construct deceptive social engineering campaigns, and execute adaptive persistence tactics that evade traditional detection methods. Unlike the malware-centric threat landscape of 2025, where automated attacks operated at scale, 2026’s cognitive intrusions will operate at the intersection of intelligence and automation, creating a fundamentally different attack paradigm that enterprises must prepare for immediately.
The India Cyber Threat Report 2026 identifies hyper-personalized AI-powered phishing as one of the most alarming cognitive threats emerging in 2026. Attackers will utilize generative AI to construct digital twins of victims’ contacts, precisely mimicking their writing styles, speech patterns, and even video presence with sufficient fidelity to bypass human skepticism and automated detection systems alike. These AI-crafted deceptions will be merged with AI-enhanced mobile banking malware capable of autonomously filling credentials, bypassing biometric authentication, and executing fraud without human intervention.
Beyond social engineering, Seqrite forecasts that state-backed APT groups and organized cybercriminal syndicates will integrate AI into every phase of attack operations, from autonomous vulnerability discovery through adaptive real-time payload evolution. These AI-enhanced strategic deception campaigns, mirroring patterns observed during Operation Sindoor in 2025, will enable adversaries to autonomously refine their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), mutate malware signatures in response to defense mechanisms, and spoof the behavioral patterns of rival threat groups to create false attribution trails.
Seqrite also warns that AI will reshape the attack surface itself through direct assaults on artificial intelligence systems and platforms. As critical sectors increasingly adopt AI for decision-making in domains such as medical imaging, credit scoring, industrial control, and fraud detection, attackers will target AI lifecycles directly by poisoning training data with biased, mislabeled, or strategically crafted samples to distort model behavior, implant logic-based backdoors, or trigger dangerous misclassifications at runtime. Moreover, legitimate enterprise AI platforms will be weaponized for lateral movement and unauthorized access, transforming AI assistants themselves into unintentional data exfiltration agents.
