KPMG's 2026 Cybersecurity Report: Eight Priorities Every GCC CISO Must Act On Now

Cyber risk has quietly outgrown the IT department. That is the central argument of KPMG's Cybersecurity Considerations 2026 a globally-informed report drawing on insights from more than 20 KPMG cyber specialists and senior executives from technology alliance partners including Google, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, and ServiceNow.

The report arrives at a defining moment for enterprise security teams across the GCC and wider MENA region. Accelerating digital transformation, AI adoption at scale, and expanding regulatory frameworks are converging to change how organizations must think about risk, resilience, and governance not as IT concerns, but as board-level business imperatives.

Cybersecurity Has Become a Core Business Function

Majid Makki, Partner and Head of Management Consulting and Technology Advisory at KPMG in Kuwait, framed the shift clearly: the CISO role is evolving from a technical function into a forward-thinking leadership position one that aligns security with business strategy and embeds it across the entire enterprise.

That evolution is not cosmetic. The report identifies eight concrete priorities shaped by forces that are simultaneously global in scale and deeply local in implication for GCC enterprises: agentic AI, non-human identity proliferation, geopolitical volatility, fractured compliance landscapes, and the near-term arrival of quantum computing threats.

The Eight Priorities

1. Preparing the Cyber Workforce for Autonomous Security
AI-powered agents are now handling increasingly complex security tasks. That productivity gain carries a governance cost: organizations must redefine roles, retrain teams, and ensure human oversight remains meaningful as autonomous systems absorb more operational responsibility. The question is no longer whether AI will augment security operations it already does but whether governance structures have caught up.

2. Navigating Geopolitics, Resilience, and Compliance
Fragmented regulations, rising data sovereignty mandates, and geopolitical volatility are forcing security and technology architects to fundamentally rethink enterprise infrastructure design. For GCC organizations operating across multiple jurisdictions or managing sensitive government, financial, and critical infrastructure data this is an immediate operational challenge. Compliance with frameworks such as Saudi Arabia's National Cybersecurity Authority (NCA) standards and the UAE's Cybersecurity Council directives must now account for cross-border data flows in an increasingly fragmented regulatory environment.

3. Safeguarding AI Systems
As AI becomes embedded in critical operations from fraud detection in banking to predictive maintenance in utilities securing the models, data pipelines, and agent behaviors that power those systems has become directly tied to regulatory compliance and institutional trust. The KPMG report treats AI security not as a sub-discipline of cybersecurity, but as a strategic pillar in its own right.

4. Managing Non-Human Identities in the Age of AI
Machine identities, service accounts, and AI agents now outnumber human users in most enterprise environments. This shift has materially expanded the attack surface while exposing deep gaps in identity governance frameworks built for human-centric access models. Managing non-human identities (NHIs) is identified in the report as one of the fastest-rising priorities on the CISO agenda globally and in GCC organizations scaling agentic AI deployments, it is increasingly urgent.

5. Enabling Trusted IT/OT Hyperconnectivity
The convergence of IT and operational technology accelerated by AI integration is raising cyber risk across critical infrastructure sectors. The report recommends dynamic, zero-trust security architectures to manage this exposure. This priority carries particular weight across the Gulf's energy, utilities, transport, and industrial sectors, where smart city platforms and IoT deployments are expanding the operational attack surface faster than traditional security perimeters can adapt.

6. Transitioning to Post-Quantum Cryptography
Quantum computing presents a credible medium-term threat to current encryption standards. The KPMG report is direct about urgency: organizations delaying their post-quantum transition risk retroactive exposure of sensitive encrypted data a concept known as "harvest now, decrypt later." For government, financial services, and healthcare institutions across the GCC, where long-lived sensitive records are common, early action on post-quantum cryptography is not optional.

7. Protecting the Supply Chain Through Detection and Response
Multi-tier supply chains have become a primary attack vector. Traditional vendor assessment frameworks are no longer sufficient. The report calls for continuous monitoring and proactive threat detection extending well beyond direct supplier relationships a challenge that is particularly acute for GCC enterprises with global vendor ecosystems and government-linked supply chains.

8. Broadening the Role and Influence of the CISO
CISOs are increasingly expected to translate cyber risk into financial, operational, and reputational language at board level. Organizations that successfully make this transition are measurably better positioned the report notes they reduce the cost of capital, maintain stronger regulatory confidence, and move faster on emerging technology adoption without accumulating hidden risk.

What This Means for GCC Enterprises in 2026

Makki's closing observation carries particular weight for regional security leaders: "Organizations that embed cybersecurity into strategy, operations, and culture are better positioned to reduce the cost of capital, maintain regulatory confidence, and enable the secure adoption of emerging technologies such as AI. Cybersecurity is no longer about building higher walls it is about enabling safer, more resilient operations that allow organizations to move faster with confidence."

For security leaders across Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Kuwait navigating the intersection of Vision 2030 mandates, expanding AI adoption, and maturing regulatory requirements, the KPMG report functions as a useful strategic compass. It reinforces a clear direction of travel: enterprise cybersecurity in the GCC has moved from cost center conversation to competitive differentiator and the organizations that treat it as such are building meaningful long-term advantage.

The full Cybersecurity Considerations 2026 report is available at kpmg.com/kw.