I am excited to announce my latest book, How AI and Quantum Impact Cyber Threats and Defenses: Shaping Your Cyber Defense Strategies.
AI Threats
AI attacks will become the norm in 2026 and there is a good chance that every organization in the world will be actively involved in a post-quantum migration plan at the same time. AI has been used to attack us since 2023, but it is likely to become THE way we are attacked in 2026. AI technology has become good enough that hackers are going to be increasingly using it to successfully attack more and more victims and phasing out human involvement.
I do not say this lightly. Since hackers started using AI with the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI in November 2022, I have talked about AI and AI attacks in every presentation I have given. For the first few years, after I scared audiences with tales of forthcoming AI attacks, I used to finish all my talks by saying, “Although AI attacks are coming, how you are likely to be attacked and exploited is not from AI. All the old hacking attack methods are working just fine!”
That line always got a laugh, along with a sigh of relief.
However, starting in the March to July timeframe last year, AI deepfakes, socially-engineered messages and vulnerability-scanning hacking bots simply matured to a point where I can see the writing on the wall. 2026 will be the year most malicious hacking moves from human hands to AI bots and increasingly more realistic AI deepfakes.
I have serious concerns about AI and the jobs it is taking along with the real threats to our way of life. In addition, I predict that AI is going to take over hacking this year. Our kids and grandkids, when they think of hacking, will likely think of an AI bot rather than some human adversary dressed in a hoodie hunched over a keyboard. Times are changing.
Everything I learned about AI I learned from and while working at KnowBe4. KnowBe4 has been involved with AI efforts since 2016, even before I joined. Today, we have more AI agents than any other Human Risk Management (HRM) vendor in the market. Our customers who use them decrease cybersecurity risk faster than if we allow human admins to help them run and operate our products, and more and more AI agents are coming!
Quantum Threat
The cryptography world has been waiting for quantum computers to get powerful enough to threaten today’s quantum-susceptible cryptography since Peter Shor created his now famous Shor’s quantum algorithm in 1994. We call the day that first happens, “Q-Day.”
The U.S. government has been telling organizations that they need to be prepared by 2035 for this day.
I think there is a good chance that this advice is going to be updated this year to say that they need to be “post-quantum” prepared ASAP! That is because multiple quantum computer vendors are getting enough stable entangled qubits (along with other needed components) that I really do not see any way Q-Day is not here before 2030.
Shor’s algorithm needs about 8,193 stable entangled qubits to break most of today’s quantum-susceptible asymmetric cryptography (e.g., RSA, Diffie-Hellman, Elliptical Curve Cryptography, ElGamal, etc.). Dozens of quantum computer vendors have hundreds of stable entangled qubits now. Multiple quantum computer vendors plan to have many thousands by 2029 and some estimate they will have a hundred thousand or more stable entangled qubits by 2030. Fact is that is just what we know about today; there might be more. The U.S. government (and China) likely have secret projects with more qubits than we publicly know about.
I predict that 2026 is going to be a doozy of a year!
How AI and Quantum Impact Cyber Threats and Defenses: Shaping Your Cyber Defense Strategies
I spent the last couple of months writing a one-stop resource that covers AI and quantum attacks and defenses. It introduces AI and quantum, what they are and what they are not. It also covers the attacks using them, how they are different from today’s attacks and what they cannot do. Each section includes recommended mitigations to protect your environment against these types of attacks.
I have taken everything I know about both subjects and put it into one book. Here is the chapter layout.
Part I. Introduction
- Why This Book?
- Traditional Hacking Attacks
Part II. AI Attacks and Defenses
- Introduction To AI
- AI-Enabled Attacks
- Attacks Against AI
- Defenses To AI Attacks
Part III. Quantum Attacks and Defenses
- Introduction to Quantum
- Quantum Attacks
- Defenses To Quantum Attacks
- Your Post-Quantum Project
- Quantum Impact on Computer Forensics
Part IV. Future Future
- How AI and Quantum Will Combine
- Coming Next
- Defense Checklist
This is my 16th book on cybersecurity and the hardest I have ever worked on a book. If you would like to learn more about AI and quantum, you can buy my book now on Amazon.
If you have any questions on either subject, AI or quantum, even if you have not bought my book, feel free to email me at rogerg@knowbe4.com.
