The Cybersecurity Threats Your Employees Must Be Ready For in 2026

It's 9:00 AM on a Tuesday. Your CFO just authorized a $50,000 wire transfer after receiving a frantic call from ‘the CEO’, or so he thought. The voice had to be the CEOs right?. The cadence was perfect. The urgency was palpable. The only problem? The CEO was nowhere near a phone when the call happened.

This isn't science fiction. In early 2024, a finance worker at British engineering firm Arup transferred $25 million to fraudsters after joining a video call with what appeared to be his company's CFO and several colleagues. Every face on the screen looked real. Every voice matched. But every person on that call, except the victim, was an AI-generated deepfake.

Welcome to the cybersecurity threats your current security awareness training must address, and the traditional playbook won't prepare your employees for any of them.

Key Takeaways

• 82% of phishing emails now use AI-generated content, eliminating the typos and awkward phrasing employees were trained to spot
• Deepfake vishing attacks increased 442% in 2024, voice alone can no longer verify identity
• Quishing (QR code phishing) has grown 14x in five years, exploiting our habit of scanning without thinking
• Business Email Compromise caused $2.77 billion in losses in 2024, dwarfing ransomware
• Annual training is obsolete, continuous micro-learning reduces phishing susceptibility by up to 86%
  
  

AI-Powered Phishing: The #1 Threat to Train For in 2026

AI-powered phishing uses large language models to generate flawless, personalized phishing emails at scale. These attacks eliminate the grammatical errors and generic content that employees were traditionally trained to spot, making them significantly harder to detect.

For years, the standard advice was simple: look for typos, watch for awkward phrasing, and be suspicious of anything that doesn't "sound right." That advice is now dangerously obsolete.

Generative AI has handed attackers a capability that previously required significant skill and time: the ability to produce flawless, contextually aware, highly personalized phishing messages in seconds. According to Sift's Q2 2025 Digital Trust Index, over 82% of phishing emails now incorporate AI-generated content, allowing fraudsters to craft convincing lures up to 40% faster than before.

The impact is measurable. Research comparing AI-generated phishing with human-crafted versions found that AI-generated emails achieved a 54% click-through rate compared to just 12% for traditionally written phishing messages. That's not a marginal improvement, it's a fundamental shift in attacker effectiveness.

What makes AI phishing particularly dangerous is its ability to scale personalization. Previously, a highly targeted spear-phishing attack required an attacker to manually research a victim, craft a custom message, and send it individually. Now, large language models can ingest publicly available information, LinkedIn profiles, company announcements, social media posts, and automatically generate hundreds of unique, contextually relevant messages.

A manufacturing company's procurement team receiving emails that reference their actual vendor relationships and recent purchase orders isn't a hypothetical. It's happening now. And those emails are nearly indistinguishable from legitimate correspondence.

What Your Training Must Cover

1. Verification protocols over visual inspection: When an email creates urgency around financial transactions, credential requests, or sensitive data, the response should be verification through a separate channel, a phone call to a known number, a direct message on an internal platform, or an in-person confirmation.
2. Contextual red flags: AI can produce perfect prose, but it often struggles with organizational context. Train employees to ask: Does this request follow normal procedures? Is the timing unusual? Would this person typically make this request via email?
3. The psychology of manipulation: AI-generated phishing still relies on the same social engineering tactics: urgency, fear, authority, and curiosity. Teaching employees to recognize when they're being emotionally manipulated is more valuable than teaching them to spot typos.
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Deepfake Audio and Vishing Attacks: Training Employees to Verify

Deepfake audio uses AI to clone a person's voice from just seconds of sample audio. Attackers use this technology for voice phishing (vishing) attacks, impersonating executives to request wire transfers, credential changes, or access to sensitive systems.

The Arup case wasn't an anomaly. Deepfake fraud attempts have increased by over 3,000% since 2022, and the technology required to execute these attacks has become remarkably accessible. An attacker can now clone a voice with reasonable accuracy from just a few seconds of sample audio, the kind readily available from earnings calls, conference presentations, YouTube videos, or even voicemail greetings.

This capability has transformed voice phishing, or "vishing," from a relatively crude attack vector into one of the most dangerous social engineering threats facing organizations. CrowdStrike observed a 442% increase in vishing incidents between the first and second half of 2024 alone.

The attack pattern is straightforward but devastating:

1. An attacker identifies a high-value target, typically someone in finance, HR, or executive support
2. They gather voice samples of a trusted authority figure, usually a C-suite executive
3. They clone the voice using widely available AI tools
4. They call the target with an urgent request: authorize a wire transfer, share credentials, bypass MFA, or provide access to sensitive systems

What makes these attacks so effective is that they exploit one of our most fundamental trust signals. We've spent our entire lives using voice recognition as identity verification. The sound of a familiar voice triggers an automatic trust response that's difficult to override, even when we intellectually understand the technology exists to fake it.

How to Identify a Deepfake Audio Call

1. Listen for extreme urgency or pressure to act immediately
2. Be suspicious of requests for secrecy ("don't tell anyone about this")
3. Question any request to bypass normal verification procedures
4. Watch for unusual requests, transactions, access, or information outside normal patterns
5. Remember: voice alone is no longer proof of identity

What Your Training Must Cover

1. Establish out-of-band verification for sensitive requests: Any request involving financial transactions, credential changes, or access to sensitive data should require verification through a different communication channel. If someone calls requesting an urgent wire transfer, the response should be: "Let me call you back at your registered number to confirm."
2. Create organizational "challenge" protocols: Some organizations have implemented verbal challenge codes, shared phrases or questions that change periodically and would be difficult for an attacker to know.
3. Understand the technology exists: Many employees simply don't know that voice cloning is possible, let alone that it's being actively used. Awareness alone won't stop every attack, but it creates the cognitive foundation for healthy skepticism.
   
   

QR Code Phishing (Quishing): A Growing Threat Employees Miss

Quishing (QR code phishing) is a social engineering attack where malicious links are embedded in QR codes. When victims scan these codes, typically received via email or found in physical locations, they're directed to credential-harvesting sites or prompted to download malware.

QR codes have become ubiquitous, restaurant menus, parking meters, two-factor authentication, conference badges. This ubiquity is precisely what makes quishing such an effective attack vector. We've been trained to scan codes without thinking, and attackers are exploiting that conditioned behavior.

The growth has been staggering. Analysis from multiple security firms shows quishing incidents have increased roughly 14-fold over the past five years, with the APWG recording over one million phishing attacks in Q1 2025 alone, a significant portion involving QR codes.

The attack works by replacing or augmenting traditional phishing links with QR codes. An employee receives an email that appears to be from IT, HR, or a trusted vendor, instructing them to scan a code to re-authenticate their account, access a document, or complete required training. The code leads to a credential harvesting page that looks identical to a legitimate login screen.

What makes quishing particularly insidious is that it shifts the attack from a managed corporate device to an employee's personal phone, often outside the protection of corporate security tools. The URL isn't visible until after the code is scanned, and even then, it appears on a small mobile screen where it's easy to miss subtle indicators of fraud.

Physical quishing attacks are also increasing. Attackers place malicious QR codes over legitimate ones on parking meters, restaurant tables, public advertisements, and even inside office buildings.

What Your Training Must Cover

1. Treat unexpected QR codes as suspicious: If an email contains a QR code asking you to authenticate, update information, or access a document, that's a red flag. Most legitimate IT communications provide direct links, not codes that require you to switch devices.
2. Preview before proceeding: Most smartphone cameras now show a URL preview before opening a scanned link. Train employees to actually read that preview and look for suspicious domains, URL shorteners, or misspellings.
3. Never scan codes in unexpected physical locations: A QR code sticker placed over another QR code is a classic attack technique. If something looks tampered with or out of place, don't scan it.
4. Report quishing attempts: Your security team needs visibility into these attacks. Ensure employees know how to report suspicious QR codes, both in emails and in physical spaces.

For a broader overview of critical topics your program should address, see our guide to the 10 critical security awareness topics every employee should know.

SMS Phishing (Smishing): More Targeted Than Ever

Smishing (SMS phishing) uses text messages to trick victims into clicking malicious links or revealing sensitive information. Modern smishing attacks leverage data from previous breaches to craft highly personalized messages that reference victims by name, bank, or employer.

Text message phishing isn't new. But the sophistication and targeting of these attacks has evolved dramatically. What was once a spray-and-pray tactic, generic "your package is delayed" messages sent to millions, has become a precision instrument.

Modern smishing campaigns leverage data from previous breaches to craft highly personalized messages. An attacker who purchases leaked data knows your name, your bank, your employer, and possibly your recent transactions. A text message that reads "Hi [your name], your [actual bank] account has been flagged for unusual activity" is far more convincing than a generic alert.

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) continues to rank phishing and smishing among the most reported cybercrimes, with SMS-based attacks accounting for an increasing share of social engineering incidents. The personal, immediate nature of text messages, and the fact that most people don't have spam filters on their phones, makes this channel particularly effective.

What Your Training Must Cover

1. Never click links in unexpected text messages: If a message claims to be from a bank, delivery service, or employer, go directly to the official website or app rather than using the provided link.
2. Recognize the urgency playbook: Smishing messages almost always create artificial urgency: your account will be suspended, your package will be returned, you'll be charged a fee. Legitimate organizations rarely communicate this way via text.
3.  Understand that sender information can be spoofed: A text message appearing to come from "Chase Bank" or a familiar short code doesn't mean it actually originated there.
4. Report smishing attempts to your security team: These messages provide valuable threat intelligence and may indicate that employee contact information has been compromised in a breach. 

Business Email Compromise: Still the Costliest Social Engineering Attack

Business Email Compromise (BEC) involves attackers compromising or spoofing legitimate business email accounts to request fraudulent wire transfers, redirect payroll, or steal sensitive data. BEC attacks caused $2.77 billion in reported losses in 2024, more than any other form of social engineering.

While AI-powered phishing and deepfakes capture headlines, BEC remains the single most financially damaging form of social engineering. The FBI's IC3 reported that BEC attacks resulted in $2.77 billion in losses in 2024 alone, dwarfing ransomware losses.

What makes BEC particularly dangerous is that it often involves no malware, no malicious links, and no attachments, just a convincing email from what appears to be a trusted source requesting a normal business transaction. Traditional security tools focused on detecting malicious payloads are essentially blind to these attacks.

The classic example remains the "CEO gift card" scam, where employees receive messages apparently from executives asking them to purchase gift cards for a client event or employee recognition. But BEC has evolved well beyond gift cards. Sophisticated attackers now target:

• Accounts payable departments with fraudulent invoices
• HR departments with payroll redirect requests
• Legal teams with fake M&A-related wire transfers
• Executive assistants with urgent requests appearing to come from leadership
  
  

What Your Training Must Cover

1. Financial requests require verification regardless of apparent sender: Any email requesting wire transfers, payment changes, gift card purchases, or payroll modifications should trigger out-of-band verification, even if it appears to come from the CEO.
2. Scrutinize email addresses carefully: Attackers register domains that are visually similar to legitimate ones: amaz0n.com, acme-corp.co, or company-name.com. Train employees to hover over sender names and examine the actual email address character by character.
3. Understand the "unusual request" red flag: BEC attacks often involve requests that deviate from normal procedures or involve unusual secrecy. "Please handle this personally and don't mention it to anyone" is attacker language, not executive communication.
4. Know the high-risk roles: Finance, HR, executive assistants, and accounts payable teams are disproportionately targeted. These groups need enhanced training and additional verification procedures.
   
   

Insider Threats: The Risk That Starts Inside

An insider threat is a security risk that originates from within the organization, either from malicious employees who intentionally abuse access, or negligent employees whose mistakes create vulnerabilities.

Not every threat comes from outside your organization. The Tesla data leak of 2023 exposed 75,000 personnel records, not because hackers breached their systems, but because two disgruntled former employees abused their legitimate access to steal and leak data to foreign journalists.

The challenge with insider threats is that they bypass most traditional security controls. An employee with legitimate access to sensitive data doesn't need to hack anything, they simply download, copy, or share information they're already authorized to view.

What Your Training Must Cover

1. Access should match job requirements. Employees should understand that requesting or maintaining access to data beyond their job responsibilities creates risk for both the organization and themselves.
2. Recognize and report concerning behavior. A colleague asking for access they don't need, attempting to bypass security controls "just this once," or expressing unusual interest in sensitive data should be reported.
3. Understand offboarding risks. Departing employees, especially those leaving involuntarily, represent elevated risk. Training should cover the importance of proper access revocation and the prohibition on taking data when leaving.

For more on this topic, see our detailed guide: What is an Insider Threat? A Guide for Businesses.

Why Traditional Security Awareness Training No Longer Works

Understanding the threats is essential, but it's only half the equation. The other half is recognizing that traditional security awareness training, annual compliance sessions with generic content, is fundamentally inadequate for this threat landscape.

Research consistently shows that continuous training dramatically outperforms annual sessions. Organizations implementing ongoing awareness programs see phishing susceptibility drop by over 40% within 90 days and up to 86% within a year. Annual training shows no meaningful long-term impact on employee behavior.

The reason is simple: the forgetting curve is real. Within days of completing training, employees begin losing the specific knowledge they gained. Within weeks, retention drops precipitously. By the time the next annual session arrives, most employees are essentially starting from scratch.

What Modern Security Awareness Training Requires

• Continuous micro-learning delivers short, focused modules regularly rather than marathon annual sessions. A five-minute module on deepfake detection every month is far more effective than an hour-long session once a year.
• Realistic simulations test employees against actual attack patterns, not just email phishing, but quishing, smishing, and vishing simulations. The moment of failure is the most powerful learning opportunity when handled correctly.
• Just-in-time feedback turns mistakes into learning. When an employee clicks a simulated phish, immediate education about the specific red flags they missed creates lasting behavior change.
• Positive reporting culture rewards employees for flagging suspicious activity rather than punishing them for mistakes. Organizations with strong reporting cultures detect threats faster and contain breaches more effectively.

Building this kind of program requires moving beyond checkbox compliance toward genuine security culture, an environment where employees understand they're an essential part of the security team, not just potential liabilities.

Building Your Human Firewall for 2026

The threats facing your organization in 2026 are more sophisticated, more scalable, and more convincing than anything we've seen before. AI has fundamentally shifted the balance of power toward attackers, giving them capabilities that previously required significant skill and resources.

But the underlying vulnerabilities these attacks exploit haven't changed. They still rely on urgency, authority, fear, and trust. They still target employees who haven't been trained to recognize manipulation. They still succeed when verification procedures don't exist or aren't followed.

Your employees remain your primary attack surface, and your most important defense. The question isn't whether they'll encounter deepfake audio, AI-generated phishing, or sophisticated QR code attacks. They will. The question is whether they'll be prepared to recognize and respond appropriately when it happens.

That preparation doesn't come from a single training session or a compliance checkbox. It comes from building an organization where security awareness is continuous, where simulations reflect actual threats, where reporting is encouraged, and where every employee understands their role in protecting the organization.

The attackers are using AI to scale their operations. Your human firewall needs to scale too.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the biggest cybersecurity threats to train employees on in 2026?

The most critical threats for 2026 include AI-powered phishing (which now accounts for over 82% of phishing emails), deepfake audio and video used for vishing attacks, QR code phishing (quishing), sophisticated SMS phishing (smishing), and Business Email Compromise. These threats exploit human trust rather than technical vulnerabilities, making employee training essential.

How has AI changed phishing attacks?

AI has eliminated the traditional red flags employees were taught to look for, poor grammar, awkward phrasing, and generic content. Attackers can now generate flawless, highly personalized phishing messages in seconds. Studies show AI-generated phishing emails achieve click-through rates of 54% compared to just 12% for traditionally crafted messages.

What is quishing and why is it dangerous?

Quishing is phishing conducted through malicious QR codes. Attackers embed harmful links in QR codes sent via email or placed in physical locations. When scanned, these codes direct victims to credential-harvesting sites or trigger malware downloads. Quishing is particularly dangerous because it shifts the attack to personal mobile devices, often bypassing corporate security tools, and the malicious URL isn't visible until after the code is scanned.

How can employees identify deepfake audio calls?

While deepfake audio can be highly convincing, employees should watch for manipulation patterns rather than audio quality. Red flags include extreme urgency, requests for secrecy, pressure to bypass normal procedures, and any request involving financial transactions or sensitive data. The safest response is to hang up and verify the request through a separate channel, calling the person back at a known number or confirming in person.

What are the most common social engineering tactics used in 2026?

The most prevalent social engineering tactics in 2026 exploit psychological triggers: urgency (act now or face consequences), authority (impersonating executives or IT), fear (your account is compromised), and trust (appearing to come from known contacts or brands). AI has made these tactics more effective by enabling attackers to personalize messages at scale and eliminate the grammatical errors that once served as warning signs.

How often should security awareness training be conducted?

Annual training is insufficient for addressing modern threats. Research shows continuous training, monthly micro-learning modules combined with regular phishing simulations, reduces susceptibility by up to 86% within a year, while annual training shows minimal long-term impact on behavior. Effective programs deliver short, frequent touchpoints rather than infrequent marathon sessions.