AI Security Threats in 2026: Annual Insights from Check Point Research

Key Takeaways Vulnerability response times have collapsed from days to hours. AI can reason about code well enough to generate working exploits at scale, so defenders now face patch windows of 12 to 72 hours instead of the traditional timeframe Your exposed AI infrastructure is being actively probed right now. Model servers, inference endpoints, and agent control panels are facing the internet, and most security teams don’t know they’re there Data leakage through approved AI use doubled in one year. Employees sharing context with generative AI to get useful answers are exposing credentials and source code in ordinary workflows, no […]

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Email Agent Hijacking: The Hidden Threat That Breaks Post-Delivery Security

Key takeaways  AI agents create a new email attack surface because they can process content before humans see it Email Agent Hijacking hides instructions in email content to manipulate AI interpretation, decisions, or outputs Post-delivery controls are too late when an AI agent acts immediately after delivery Organizations need preventive protection for AI-consumed content and validation for AI-generated responses AI agents are now reading and writing emails before humans ever see them. What was once a human-centric communication channel is quickly becoming an AI-driven workflow, and that shift introduces a new and largely unprotected attack surface.  Much of the industry’s recent attention has centered […]

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How Check Point Email Security Stopped a Student Job Scam Before It Reached the Inbox

A student receives what looks like a routine summer job offer from a trusted school account. The link goes to Google Forms. The email passes authentication. There is no malware, no fake login page, and no strange-looking domain. To the student and to many security tools, it looks harmless.  But this is where modern phishing succeeds: it borrows trust instead of faking it. In this case, Check Point Research observed more than 3,200 copies of a phishing campaign targeting students with the promise of flexible summer work. The emails were sent from a compromised but legitimate school mailbox and directed […]

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Redefining the CISO Contract: From Securing the Business to Securely Doing Business

Walk into almost any executive leadership meeting right now and you’ll find the same dynamic playing out. The CEO is asking how the company can do more with AI, faster. Engineering teams are already three sprints deep into building something new. And when the CISO walks into the room, the energy subtly shifts. The unspoken question is always the same: is this person here to help us move, or to slow us down? That dynamic is an issue, and I think it’s one the security community has to own. The CISO has long carried the label of the “Office of […]

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A New Ransomware Leader Emerges as June 2026 Attack Volumes Climb Worldwide

Key takeaways Weekly cyber-attacks per organization reached 2,270 in June 2026, up 10% from May and 17% higher than June 2025 Education, Government, and Telecommunications again sat at the top of the industry list, with Education and Telecommunications posting double-digit gains while Government rose 5% year over year Most regions grew year over year, led by Latin America at a 27% increase, while Africa was the exception with a 9% decline GenAI exposure held roughly steady, though Healthcare and Telecommunications emerged as the industries carrying the most risk from unsafe prompts Ransomware attacks reached 646 for the month, a 33% […]

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How Unified Policies Close Security Gaps

As organizations adopt both on-premises firewalls and cloud-delivered SASE, security becomes more distributed and complex. Users connect from headquarters, branch offices, and remote locations, expecting the same secure and seamless internet experience everywhere. When Internet Access policies across firewalls and SASE are managed separately, maintaining consistency becomes harder, increasing the risk of human error and misconfiguration.  The 2026 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report found that misconfiguration is one of the top recurring error types in breaches year after year, noting that, “the fact that Misconfiguration remains among the top errors over time is rather concerning.” In environments with separate Internet Access policies, that risk is […]

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Under Pressure: Insights from the 2026 Exposure Gap Report

Risk is concentrating. The 2026 Exposure Gap Report shows vulnerabilities claiming a larger share of critical exposure, and that shift has real implications for how security teams prioritize their response. Two findings are central to this change. Vulnerabilities now represent a much larger share of critical exposure, and only a small percentage of vulnerability alerts are validated as exploitable. Together, these findings show why prioritization depends on context, validation, and a clear understanding of which exposures require action. Exposure Is Shifting Toward Vulnerabilities Vulnerabilities now account for 42.6% of critical exposure, up from 18.7% in 2025. This increase shows that […]

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