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Security teams are heading into 2026 facing a very different risk picture than they did even a year ago, and that was the focus of our recent 2026 Security Predictions Live Stream. Hosted by Chelsea Rose from Liferaft, the session brought together frontline experts who live these shifts every day, both online and in the physical world.
Our panel featured:
Darren Dumoulin
Director of Campus Safety and Prevention Services at Concordia University, who spoke to how targeted threats and doxing are reshaping executive and campus protection.
Mark Freedman
Principal & CEO at Rebel Global Security, explored how geopolitical and economic pressures are driving more coordinated campaigns against organizations and their leaders.
Matt Hogan
The Chief Technology Officer at Liferaft unpacked why the EU AI Act and similar regulations will push security teams to demand explainable, auditable, and accountable AI in every tool they rely on.
Davian Hoffman
Principal at Oleander Consulting, discussed how protest activity and physical approaches now routinely spill over into digital spaces, creating a hybrid threat environment that demands integrated monitoring.
A Deeper Dive on Our Expert Trends
While the live conversation covered a wide range of topics, a few clear through-lines emerged for anyone responsible for protecting people, assets, and reputation in a hyper‑connected world. The panel kept coming back to three core questions: how do we better understand and anticipate hybrid digital–physical threats, how do we protect executives and high‑profile individuals as online narratives spill into the real world, and how do we apply AI responsibly without sacrificing transparency or control?
3 Common Themes for 2026
Hybrid threats and executive exposure
One major theme from the session is the convergence of digital and physical risk. Targeted threats, doxing, and protest activity against executives and other high‑profile figures are no longer confined to one channel; a single grievance can start online, escalate into real‑world action, and then be amplified back across social platforms. For organizations, this means executive protection strategies need to include continuous monitoring of open sources and social media, not just physical security playbooks.
AI regulation and security decision‑making
Another key prediction centers on how regulation, including the EU AI Act and similar emerging standards, will influence the tools security teams rely on. Security leaders will be expected to understand not only what an AI‑driven system outputs, but how it reaches its conclusions and how those decisions are documented over time. That raises the bar for vendors providing threat intelligence, identity resolution, and risk scoring: opaque “black box” models will come under scrutiny, while solutions that offer clear audit trails, explainable scoring, and human‑in‑the‑loop controls will become the default expectation.
Operationalizing predictions inside security programs
What ultimately makes these predictions valuable is how they translate into action. Forward‑looking teams are already mapping these trends to concrete investments: strengthening executive digital risk monitoring, aligning physical and cyber intelligence functions, reviewing AI‑powered tools for explainability and governance, and building cross‑functional workflows between security, legal, and communications.
In the full video replay above, the group digs into what all of this means for digital threat monitoring, identity resolution, and managing exposure across the surface, deep, and dark web in 2026 and beyond.