CrowdStrike Outlines 2026 AI Security Trends and Zero-Day Risks

By Adam Meyers, SVP of Counter Adversary Operations, CrowdStrike

AI: The Zero-Day Accelerator

In 2026, we’ll likely see an explosion of zero-day vulnerabilities driven by AI. As AI accelerates code generation and software development, it’s also becoming ideally suited to finding flaws in software. There are two primary ways to identify these vulnerabilities: targeted analysis, which is resource-intensive and typically requires a human in the loop. The other is commonly called fuzzing and involves automation to identify flaws. GenAI is a game-changer for the latter. AI can optimize fuzzing methodologies and analyze crash reports at scale, rapidly surfacing exploitable flaws.

Early indicators suggest advanced adversaries are already investing in this research, driving down the cost of discovering and weaponizing vulnerabilities. These exploits are the keys that adversaries use to gain initial access to their targets. The defenders who succeed will be those using AI with the same speed and precision: detecting, patching, and proactively hunting for zero-days as fast as they’re found.

By Elia Zaitsev, CTO, CrowdStrike

Prompt Injection is a Frontier Security Problem

Just as phishing defined the email era, prompt injection is defining the AI era. Adversaries are embedding hidden instructions to override safeguards, hijack agents, steal data, and manipulate models – turning the AI interaction layer into the new attack surface and prompts into the new malware.

In 2026, AI Detection and Response (AIDR) will become as essential as EDR, with organizations requiring real-time visibility into prompts, responses, agent actions, and tool calls to contain AI abuse before it spreads, ensuring AI drives innovation, not risk.

The Rise of Security Orchestrators

Adversaries are already using AI to move faster than humanly possible – and legacy SOCs can’t keep up. In 2026, defenders will evolve from alert handlers to orchestrators of the agentic SOC: intelligent agents that reason, decide, and act across the security lifecycle at machine speed, always under human command. This is the model that will reshape the balance between adversaries and defenders, accelerating outcomes and giving humans the time and clarity to focus on strategy, judgment, and impact.

The success of this evolution will be dependant on the following pre-requisites:

●        Providing both agents and analysts complete environmental context with the ability to immediately action any signal.

●        An agentic workforce of mission-ready agents trained on years of expert SOC decisions to automate high-friction tasks with speed and precision.

●        Benchmarks and validation to prove the effectiveness of agents.

●        The ability for organizations to build and customize their own agents to satisfy unique needs.

●        Orchestrating agent-to-agent and analyst-to-agent collaboration within one coordinated system guided by human expertise.

Security analysts are not going away – they’re being elevated by a fleet of agents that work at machine speed.

AI Identity Management

In 2026, AI agents and non-human identities will explode across the enterprise, expanding exponentially and dwarfing human identities. Each agent will operate as a privileged super-human with OAuth tokens, API keys, and continuous access to previously siloed data sets, making them the most powerful and most dangerous entities in your environment.

Identity security built for humans won’t survive this shift. Security teams will need real-time visibility, instant containment, and the ability to trace every agent action back to the human who created it. When an AI agent wires money to the wrong account or leaks intellectual property, "the AI did it" won't be an acceptable answer. This is the era where identity security means protecting entities that don't have a pulse.