Industrialization of cybercrime through AI, automation, and specialization
Cybercrime is scaling up, fast. What used to be the domain of lone actors or small teams has become a high-efficiency ecosystem driven by automation, artificial intelligence, and specialization. We’re entering an environment where complexity drops for the attacker, and speed becomes the ultimate weapon. They’re no longer wasting time creating new tools. Instead, they’re refining what already works and deploying it at a scale that most companies are still unprepared to handle.
By 2026, intelligent systems will handle tasks across the entire attack chain, scanning for weaknesses, breaching systems, gathering data, and even negotiating ransoms. Humans won’t be writing phishing emails anymore, AI will personalize those messages. And it won’t stop at one campaign. Automated infrastructure means one cybercriminal group can launch multiple, simultaneous attacks across industries and geographies.
This changes everything for how organizations will have to defend themselves. The old playbook, reactive security, periodic audits, delayed response, is obsolete. If cyberattacks now unfold in minutes, your defenses need to operate just as fast. The only way forward is combining human insight with intelligent systems that make decisions as quickly as threats emerge.
According to Fortinet’s Cyberthreat Predictions for 2026, cybercrime is no longer limited by innovation. It’s limited by throughput, how rapidly an idea becomes impact. The side that scales faster wins.
Enhanced attack lifecycle through AI-powered automation
AI won’t just change the speed of attacks, it’ll unlock new levels of precision. In the world we’re moving into, cybercriminals will use AI to manage complex attacks without having a hand on the wheel. These systems will identify weak credentials in your network, move laterally to access more data, and prioritize which information is most valuable, all without manual input.
Once data is stolen, AI will immediately evaluate its financial potential. It will generate customized extortion messages for high-value targets within minutes, adjusting tone, language, and urgency based on individual psychological profiles. Cybercriminals aren’t just expanding the number of attacks, they’re increasing the success rate per attack.
This is no longer a scenario where you get hit once and recover. It’s more like having a smart adversary who hits you in several places at once and constantly learns how your systems respond. If you’re not set up to detect, contain, and neutralize this activity in real time, you’re already behind.
The Fortinet 2026 report makes it clear: AI is already being used to shorten the gap between breach and monetization. This forces defenders to stop assuming they have hours or days. In 2026, you’ll have minutes, maybe less, to identify and stop an evolving threat. Adaptive, AI-powered defense is the baseline.
Transformation of the underground economy into a structured, service-oriented model
The underground market for cybercrime is becoming more structured, more predictable, even professional. In 2026, it won’t just be about buying stolen data or malware kits. It’ll be about specialized services. Botnets, credential access, exploit kits, they’ll be sold as tailored packages, segmented by industry, country, system profile, and business type.
Cybercriminals are adopting business strategies. They’re introducing customer service, reputation scoring, and automated escrow. These aren’t one-off deals anymore; they’re recurring services built to scale. The quality of service will continue to improve. Sellers in these markets now compete on efficiency, customization, and reliability. That means threat actors who buy access to your systems aren’t starting from scratch, they’re walking in with pre-assessed targets, enhanced data, and automated tools.
This shift should significantly influence how you approach cybersecurity at your firm. Generic, blanket controls won’t be enough. If malicious actors are working with precise, customized toolkits, your defense has to be equally adaptive, tailored to your industry, your attack surface, and your exposure.
The Fortinet Cyberthreat Predictions for 2026 describe this clearly. Underground markets are rapidly evolving into full-service economies. They’re becoming as structured and scalable as legitimate commercial enterprises. Cybercrime is no longer improvised. It’s productized.
Evolution of cyber defense into machine-speed, continuous threat exposure management
2026 will demand a completely different tempo in cybersecurity. Detection and response must happen almost instantly. That means you can’t rely on static systems or manual workflows anymore. The most effective defense will run continuously, scanning for exposures, validating intelligence, and launching isolation protocols within minutes of detecting a threat.
Standard frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK and CTEM (Continuous Threat Exposure Management) are the backbone of this approach. They help map active threats to known attack techniques and provide actionable insights in real-time. But what really matters is implementation speed. Integration has to be tight across your systems, identity management, and security controls.
Another major shift: identity is now your frontline. It’s not just about verifying users anymore. AI agents, scripts, autonomous services, all of these are interacting with your systems. You’ll need to recognize and validate machine IDs as accurately as you do human ones. If you don’t, attackers will exploit those blind spots for privilege escalation and data theft.
The Fortinet 2026 report emphasizes that reducing the time from detection to containment is critical. Operations must move at machine speed. The organizations that get there first will be much harder to breach, and much faster to recover if they are. This is the standard of defense you need to be thinking about now.
Necessity of global collaboration and enhanced deterrence measures
As cybercrime industrializes, response strategies must follow suit. This isn’t a problem any single organization, or even country, can address in isolation. Defending against large-scale, AI-powered cyber threats requires coordinated action across governments, private enterprises, and security vendors. And that coordination needs to be real-time, not reactive.
Initiatives like INTERPOL’s Operation Serengeti 2.0, supported by Fortinet and other private-sector leaders, have already demonstrated how shared intelligence and joint disruption campaigns can take down criminal infrastructure. These strategies work when they’re targeted and consistent. They scale deterrence and dismantle the backbone of criminal ecosystems.
At the same time, programs like the Fortinet–Crime Stoppers International Cybercrime Bounty are taking deterrence further. They give global communities a safe way to report malicious activity and elevate enforcement. Add to that emerging education campaigns focused on preventing youth from entering online crime, and the strategy starts covering more ground, both offensively and preventively.
The message for executives is straightforward: cybercrime is now a distributed and scalable industry, and the response must follow the same model. If your company interacts with digital infrastructure, any digital infrastructure, then you’re part of this equation. Supporting shared intelligence platforms and international frameworks isn’t just a social good. It’s operational security at scale.
Cybercrime operating on an industry-like scale by 2027
By 2027, cybercrime will match the operational scale of entire global industries. It will function with structure, speed, and specialization. The next evolution will come from agentic AI, systems made up of semi-autonomous agents that work together, coordinate tasks dynamically, and learn from each encounter. These won’t need constant supervision. They’ll make decisions, adapt in real time, and challenge defensive systems constantly.
We’re also going to see more supply-chain attacks. Not just on cloud providers or third-party vendors, but on core AI tools and embedded systems. Threat actors know that AI, and the systems that run it, are becoming the foundation of enterprise infrastructure. Targeting them directly breaks more than just one system. It can disrupt entire networks and manufacturing, communications, or financial operations.
To stay ahead, defenders will have to match this evolution in kind. That means organizations must build layered, adaptive defense systems that integrate human expertise and machine intelligence, simultaneously. You’ll need predictive intelligence to get out in front, automation to act fast, and exposure management to keep your real-time risk surface under control.
The FortiGuard Labs report makes the trajectory clear: the speed and scale of cyber threats will only increase. Your resilience depends on whether your systems are built for what’s next, not just what’s already happened. The teams that move now, integrating intelligence, orchestration, and fast decision-making, will set the standard for security moving forward.
Key highlights
- Cybercrime is scaling through automation and AI: Leaders should prepare for cyberattacks that operate at speed and scale, leveraging AI to automate entire attack chains. Traditional defenses won’t hold against volume-driven, machine-speed threats.
- AI is reshaping the entire attack lifecycle: Decision-makers must invest in real-time threat detection and response, as attackers now use AI to prioritize stolen data and automate extortion. The window to act is shrinking from hours to minutes.
- Underground markets are becoming structured, data-driven ecosystems: Executives should assume attackers have detailed insights into their industry, geography, and infrastructure and adjust security measures to reflect this increased targeting precision.
- Security operations must match threat speed with machine-level response: Organizations should adopt continuous threat exposure frameworks and identity-based controls to compress response time and secure both human and non-human access points.
- Global collaboration is a strategic security asset: Companies should support and participate in cross-border initiatives that share intelligence and strengthen collective deterrence, critical for dismantling the infrastructure behind modern cybercrime.
- Cybercrime will rival legitimate industries by 2027: Forward-thinking leaders need to integrate AI defense, predictive analytics, and adaptive systems now to remain resilient as attacks grow more autonomous, coordinated, and supply-chain focused.
