Cyber risk in 2026 isn’t defined by a lack of security tools; it’s defined by how quickly weaknesses compound when organizations aren’t aligned.
To understand how organizations are responding, we researched the priorities, concerns, and blind spots of three critical leadership roles: the CISO, CIO, and CTO. While each persona approaches cyber resilience from a different vantage point, the findings show a consistent pattern: attacks are accelerating faster than decision-making, governance, and workforce readiness can keep up.
Across all three leadership roles, executives expect more attacks, more complexity, and more pressure to move fast. What separates resilient organizations from exposed ones is not awareness of threats, but how effectively leaders translate that awareness into coordinated action.
Download each report below for the full research on where leaders agree, where gaps persist, and what each role needs to know now:
A Shared Reality: Speed Is the New Risk Multiplier
One of the most consistent signals across our research was the expectation of imminent attacks combined with limited preparedness.
- 45% of CISOs say AI-powered attacks are likely in the next year, but only 29% believe their organization is prepared to defend against them
- 51% of CIOs say AI-powered attacks are likely in the next year, but only one-third believe their organization is prepared to defend against them
- 39% of CTOs say AI-powered attacks are likely in the next year, but only 24% believe their organization is prepared to defend against them
This gap between expectation and readiness shows up repeatedly... and not just within AI. Ransomware, business email compromise, phishing, and software supply chain attacks all rank high across personas, often with preparedness trailing likelihood by double digits.
Workforce Exposure Is No Longer a Secondary Risk
Every report points to the workforce as a critical pressure point... and the data shows why.
- 61% of CISOs worry that employees are increasingly unable to identify cyber attacks
- Two-thirds of CIOs say it’s becoming harder for employees to distinguish what’s real from what’s fake
- 60% of CTOs believe workforce deception is becoming more difficult to manage, and their top expected attacks—ransomware (57%) and business email compromise (50%)—both exploit human behavior
Yet despite this, workforce education is under-prioritized:
- Only 22% of CTOs say workforce cyber education is a key priority for the coming year
- CIOs are twice as likely to prioritize boardroom engagement (39%) over educating employees (19%)
This mismatch suggests organizations know where attacks succeed, but are not consistently investing where defenses fail first.
Software Supply Chain Risk: High Awareness, Low Visibility
Software supply chain exposure is one of the few issues that all three roles recognize as risky, yet visibility remains limited.
- Only 25% of CISOs see assigning confidence levels to suppliers as important, and just 31% believe the biggest risk could come from the software supply chain—despite growing attack sophistication
- 56% of CIOs believe software supply chain attacks are imminent, but only 22% say they have a highly effective view of their supply chain
- Among CTOs, just 27% say they have very high visibility into the software supply chain, even though 60% are concerned about third-party distribution channels
In other words: leaders know where risk exists, but lack the operational insight to manage it at speed.
What Each Leader Needs to Know
While the threat landscape is shared, the “need to know” actions differ by each role.
CISOs:
CISOs are increasingly seen as business enablers instead of risk owners. Many already believe their adaptive security strategies allow the organization to innovate more confidently and increasingly see cyber resilience as a growth enabler. So much so that 61% say their adaptive security approaches enable their companies to take greater risks when it comes to innovation.
But execution gaps remain, as fewer than half believe business risk appetite is aligned with cyber risk management.
CISO imperative: Push cyber resilience up and out into the boardroom, across lines of business, and throughout the software lifecycle. Technical maturity must be matched with board-level alignment, supply chain scrutiny, and accountability beyond the security function.
CIOs:
AI is your leverage point, but only if you tie it to outcomes. Successful CIOs are using data to make the business case for proactive security. Our research found that 62% of CIOs say their business has spent more money responding to attacks than preventing them, yet less than half of KPIs effectively link cybersecurity to business outcomes. A major gap, if we say so ourselves.
CIO imperative: Translate cyber resilience into cost, risk, and growth language that secures sustained executive buy-in.
CTOs:
You are confident in tools, but far less confident in alignment. We found that only ~27% of CTOs experience collaboration between the business and security functions are effective (and 75% reported unclear responsibility for cyber resilience is impairing strategy).
CTOs are generally confident in architectures and tools, yet far less confident in the people and processes surrounding them.
CTO imperative: Pair technical excellence with clear accountability, cross-enterprise training, and tighter third-party collaboration.
The Leadership Mandate for 2026
The takeaway from LevelBlue’s research is clear: cyber resilience isn’t owned by any single role. The organizations best positioned to withstand modern threats are those that:
- Embed cybersecurity into every project and acquisition
- Align cyber risk with business risk at the executive level
- Combine AI-powered defenses with human expertise and accountability
- Treat workforce and supply chain exposure as primary attack surfaces
In today’s threat landscape, resilience is defined by speed, creating proactive strategies, removing friction, and aligning the business with cyber for success.
