Disciplined security. Trusted AI. Confident oversight.

Multiple US state privacy laws hit effective dates in 2026, while California’s framework pushes formal privacy risk assessments and cybersecurity audit readiness that looks and feels like regulator grade governance.

• Why it matters Rights handling alone will not satisfy regulators. Assessment driven compliance forces a repeatable way to justify processing, measure risk, document mitigations, and show executive accountability.
• Action Stand up a privacy risk assessment workflow that gates high risk processing, define material change triggers, refresh records of processing activities, and align vendor terms to support assessments and evidence delivery.
• For boards Ask for assessment coverage by product, top privacy risks with dated mitigation plans, and a view of which vendors can block compliance due to contract or evidence gaps.
• Where we help Risk assessment programs, records of processing rebuilds, and audit ready evidence binders tied to clear owners and timelines.

2026 shifts AI governance from policy statements to operational controls, especially for employment and consequential decision use cases that create discrimination and consumer harm exposure.

• Why it matters You will not win arguments with intent. You win with evidence: inventories, testing, monitoring, approvals, and documented human oversight.
• Action Build a single AI inventory, classify by risk, implement an intake gate with testing and rollback criteria, and run bias and disparate impact testing for Human Resources and other consequential decisions.
• For boards Ask which AI systems influence hiring, access, pricing, eligibility, or customer outcomes, and whether each has a named owner, test results, monitoring, and an incident response path.
• Where we help Practical AI governance operating models that map legal obligations to controls, plus evidence packs that stand up to scrutiny.

2026 is the year many organizations discover they cannot retrofit conformity, technical documentation, and post market monitoring after launch without disrupting revenue and delivery.

• Why it matters EU Artificial Intelligence Act obligations pull in engineering, product, security, privacy, and vendor management. Missing documentation becomes a launch blocker.
• Action Classify EU relevant AI systems, define the minimum documentation pack, map monitoring and incident handling to your security operations model, and update vendor contracts to require cooperation and evidence.
• For boards Ask for a list of EU exposed AI features, high risk candidates, and the state of technical documentation, monitoring, and supplier dependencies.
• Where we help EU AI Act readiness roadmaps, evidence design, and operating model integration that avoids parallel compliance bureaucracy.

Modern incidents increasingly pivot through application programming interface tokens, OAuth grants, and high privilege integrations rather than classic network intrusion.

• Why it matters Customer success, analytics, ticketing, and customer relationship management integrations can become silent exfiltration paths with limited logging and weak vendor coverage.
• Action Map high privilege software as a service integrations, tighten scopes, rotate tokens, enforce short lived credentials, and add anomaly detection for unusual application programming interface usage.
• For boards Ask for an inventory of high privilege integrations, which teams own them, and what controls exist for token rotation, alerting, and vendor incident notification.
• Where we help Integration risk assessments, vendor addenda, and actionable hardening plans that reduce breach probability without slowing growth.

Certificate lifetimes are trending shorter and attackers continue to monetize known exploited vulnerabilities. Manual hygiene becomes an outage and breach factory in 2026.

• Why it matters Expiring transport layer security certificates and slow patch cycles create public failures that customers notice instantly and attackers exploit repeatedly.
• Action Inventory internet facing assets, automate certificate issuance and renewal, align patch service level targets to known exploited vulnerability lists, and report hygiene risk as measurable exposure.
• For boards Ask for numbers on unmanaged internet assets, certificate expiry exposure, and age of critical vulnerabilities, plus the automation plan with dates.
• Where we help External attack surface reviews, hygiene automation patterns, and board-ready metrics that connect basic controls to business resilience.

Extortion without encryption remains common. Pressure shifts to legal, regulatory, customer communications, and operational continuity while attackers move faster than governance cycles.

• Why it matters The hardest part is not decryption. It is time-bound decisions, evidence preservation, and credible communications while operations remain constrained.
• Action Validate backup and restore for critical paths, harden identity and remote access, pre-stage outside counsel and incident response partners, and run an end-to-end exercise that includes executive decisions.
• For boards Ask when the last full ransomware exercise ran, what assumptions failed, and whether the call tree and decision logs are documented and tested.
• Where we help Scenario design, tabletop exercises, and post-incident remediation plans with owners and due dates that actually close gaps.