CEO Outlook 2026: Anuj Goel

Anuj Goel, Cyware

What is the biggest market opportunity you and your channel partners will tackle together in 2026?

Helping organizations finally move threat intelligence into everyday security operations. Most teams already have more threat intel data than they know what to do with. What's missing is the ability to act on that intelligence quickly and consistently. That's where our partners play a critical role. MSSPs, integrators and ISAC-aligned partners are on the front lines helping customers operationalize threat intelligence across complex environments. Together, we're enabling organizations to move beyond isolated alerts and toward coordinated, intelligence-driven defense that actually scales.

What are the key technology investments you plan to make in 2026?

Cyber threat intelligence (CTI) is a major turning point going into 2026. We expect CTI to begin operating more autonomously. Historically CTI has informed teams about storms that had already happened and what to pay attention to next. In 2026, there will be a shift in its observation that will be driven by investments in advanced AI, agentic systems and collective defense. These will transform how organizations gather and collect information and prepare for defenses faster than before. With the three key investments, CTI will expand into a new domain in 2026.

What impact do you expect AI to have on the business you and your partners do together in 2026?

AI will continue to reshape how threat intelligence is actioned, but the real impact in 2026 will come from how intelligence is applied inside day-to-day operations. The biggest shift we're seeing is that AI is no longer just assisting analysts with insights, but also increasingly automating threat intel workflows, while humans focus on supervision, validation, and decision-making. At Cyware, we've been very intentional about this evolution. Cyware Quarterback AI has matured into an AI fabric that unifies a connected layer of generative, agentic, and in-product AI capabilities. This AI fabric employs multiple AI methodologies, rather than a singular AI model or approach, to effectively support analysts throughout the detection and response lifecycle. Agentic AI plays an important role in that fabric by helping automate routine tasks, accelerate correlation and reduce manual effort, but it's always grounded in operational context and human oversight. This approach gives partners the ability to deliver faster, more consistent outcomes without needing to scale headcount at the same rate. As customers expect stronger results with fewer resources, that shift will be critical to how partners differentiate their services this year.

What do you see as the toughest challenges facing customers in 2026?

Threat actors will hijack AI agents with malicious prompts, redirecting them into persistent, self-optimizing intrusions. They will abuse open-source tooling and multi-cloud environments to quietly embed and evolve their tactics. This rapid adaptation will outpace traditional defenses, making high-velocity AI-driven threat intelligence absolutely essential.

What is the key to success for your channel partners in 2026?

Customers are prioritizing faster response and consistent execution over more alerts or tools, given the growing speed and complexity of threats. Their customers are struggling with analyst burnout or alert fatigue and want to see their threat intel investments enabling better security operations. Success for channel partners will come from helping customers transition from being overwhelmed with threat intel to streamlined, actionable workflows. These workflows must automate threat ingestion through to action, reducing response time, streamlining workflows, and scaling security programs. This will also offload the analyst burden.

My top priority for 2026 is: Cyber threat intelligence management is becoming more "democratized" with organizations of all sizes creating dedicated budgets for cyber threat intelligence management. Our top priority for 2026 is collaborating with our partners to drive scale and velocity with AI-powered threat intelligence adoption in the market, streamlining workflows for analysts to simplify processing threat intel into action.