2026 Predictions from Zimperium

Krishna Vishnubhotla, Vice President of Product Solutions, Zimperium:

The biggest shift in 2025 was the EU forcing Apple to allow alternative app stores and sideloading. This breaks Apple’s closed model and brings new security risks to iOS, from unvetted apps to malicious SDKs. The real driver for global traction will be revenue. Developers keep more of what they earn outside the App Store, and that financial upside will push other regions to consider similar rules. My prediction: In 2026, once the economics become obvious, this model will spread — reshaping both mobile security and iOS app distribution.

What were some of the most common mobile security challenges you saw with customers in 2025? What do you anticipate will be the biggest obstacles or priorities in 2026 and how should companies prepare?

Krishna Vishnubhotla, Vice President of Product Solutions, Zimperium:

In 2025, the biggest challenge I saw was the skills gap in mobile security. Many teams were still learning how to secure mobile apps, protect keys, and understand modern attacker techniques. In 2026, that gap will widen fast as AI-written code becomes the norm. AI will help developers move faster, but it will also introduce vulnerabilities at a scale most teams aren’t ready for. My prediction: the organisations that succeed in 2026 will be the ones that adopt AI-driven security tools. These tools help teams understand issues faster, triage intelligently, and fix problems before attackers exploit them. The skills gap won’t disappear, but AI-driven security can bridge it and keep mobile apps resilient as development speed accelerates

What talent or workforce trend do you expect to define competitive advantage in cybersecurity next year?

Krishna Vishnubhotla, Vice President of Product Solutions, Zimperium:

I expect a major shift in how enterprises empower their workforce. More organisations will adopt third-party mobile apps to boost employee productivity, especially in hybrid roles. At the same time, companies will equip workers with AI tools like Gemini and ChatGPT to speed up decision-making and reduce manual work. The enterprises that integrate these capabilities securely and at scale will gain a clear competitive advantage in cybersecurity.

What’s one mobile risk area leaders are underestimating heading into 2026, and what’s your advice for mitigating it?

Krishna Vishnubhotla, Vice President of Product Solutions, Zimperium:

The most underestimated mobile risk heading into 2026 is the speed at which AI is helping teams ship insecure code. Nearly half of AI-generated code contains security flaws, and sixty-eight percent of developers now spend more time fixing vulnerabilities than building new features. AI will improve, but not fast enough to keep pace with how quickly teams are adopting it. My prediction: this will get much worse before it gets better. We will see more vulnerabilities pushed into production, not fewer. The organisations that stay ahead will be the ones continuously scanning their code and binaries, protecting what matters most — their code, data, and cryptographic keys. Speed means nothing if what you ship isn’t secure.

How do you expect AI agents or autonomous systems to reshape mobile threat detection and response in the next year?

Tim Roddy, VP Product Marketing, Zimperium: AI agents will begin to appear as assistants pulling info from documentation, as assistants to flag anomalies requiring investigation and as Triage agents to analyse incidents and track the attack chain and implement response that is usually done by SOC personnel, often at the first level. This will speed up incident response times and resolution from days to hours and perhaps minutes. It will also reduce the need for entry level 1 analysts, which will have employment impact and limit the pipeline to advanced level 3 analysts, which will be a long-term challenge for the security industry.

How much of your 2026 security budget do you believe should be allocated to mobile-specific tools and protections, and what factors are driving that decision?

Kern Smith, SVP of Global Solutions Engineering at Zimperium: In 2026, generative AI will drive an explosion in mobile threats and third-party app exploits. Attackers will weaponise AI to automate phishing, impersonation, and malicious app creation at scale—making mobile compromise faster, smarter, and harder to detect. As organisations rely more on mobile devices and apps to run their business, securing both the device and the app will become essential to defending against this next wave of AI-driven threats.