As the digital landscape continues to transform, the security challenges organizations face are naturally evolving as well. The new year brings a bit of consensus around what’s shaping security teams’ priorities in 2026, and, surprise, surprise, a focus on agentic AI risk leads the pack, according to the latest Dark Reading readership poll. The poll takes its cues from the final Reporter’s Notebook videocast discussion of the year last month, in which cybersecurity experts Rob Wright from Dark Reading, David Jones from Cybersecurity Dive, and Alissa Irei from Tech Target Search Security break down a collated list of all the insights that people sent Dark Reading reporters in December regarding 2026 security operations predictions. We decided to poll readers on the top 4 (the ones most often cited by the experts that contacted the Dark Reading news team), and the results were enlightening:

Full poll : 2026: The Year Agentic AI Becomes the Attack-Surface Poster Child.