Insights gathered from candid interviews with seasoned enterprise-scale CISOs

As we look toward 2026, enterprise CISOs face unprecedented pressure: AI supply chain exposure, expanding vendor ecosystems, regulatory escalation, and the growing expectation that third-party breaches are the CISO’s responsibility — no matter who caused them.

This article draws from multiple in-depth interviews with veteran CISOs of global enterprises (1,000+ employees). These leaders operate under intense board scrutiny and rely on data, evidence, and formal governance to defend their programs — and their credibility.

One conversation particularly stood out above the rest. Here are the top insights they shared for 2026.

The Shifts CISOs Must Make Before 2026 Hits

1. “Vendor AI integrations are becoming the new shadow IT — and they’re happening without disclosure.”

The CISO we interviewed didn’t hesitate when asked about emerging risk:

“Every SaaS provider is pushing AI features silently into their product. If you don’t ask, they won’t tell you.”

She emphasized that AI must now be treated as a supply chain risk domain, not a product feature.

2026 Actions:

Require explicit disclosure of all AI features and embedded model providers
Demand clarity on data training, retention, and prompt-handling practices
Enforce guardrails like inference isolation, prompt logging, and access boundaries
Update DPAs, SLAs, and questionnaires to include AI-specific controls

Their warning was clear:

“If you don’t have an AI supply chain standard by 2026, your board will ask why.”

2026 Priority: Formalize an AI Supply Chain Risk Standard for all vendors.

2. “Annual assessments no longer capture today’s reality. Event-driven oversight is the only model that reflects real risk.”

When discussing cadence, the CISO spoke plainly:

“A lot can change in 10 months — new sub-processors, new AI features, new vulnerabilities. Annual cycles don’t capture any of it.”

2026 Actions:

Her team is shifting to a signal-based oversight model:

Event Triggers:

Breaches
Sub-processor additions
New AI capabilities
Region expansions
Expiring SOC or ISO certifications
Major infrastructure changes

Continuous monitoring isn’t about reviewing everything constantly — it’s about reacting to the right events at the right time.

2026 Priority: Continuous monitoring for all Tier 1 and Tier 2 vendors.

3. “If you’re not quantifying vendor risk, the board won’t take you seriously.”

This CISO spoke bluntly about board expectations:

“Boards don’t want dashboards and risk ratios. They want financial exposure, operational impact, and likelihood of disruption.”

2026 Actions:

Scenario modeling tied to revenue, customer operations, and regulatory obligations
Quantifying inherent vs. residual risk to show control effectiveness
Mapping vendor dependencies to critical business outcomes

She added:

“Quantification and documentation is your defensibility. Without it, it’s just hand-waving.”

2026 Priority: Implement enterprise-wide vendor risk quantification.

4. “Break the silos. Vendor risk must operate like an enterprise system, not a security island.”

This CISO emphasized that vendor risk cannot be contained within security anymore:

“Procurement, Legal, Privacy, Finance — they all play a role. If they’re not aligned, your process breaks.”

2026 Actions:

Embed Security into procurement before vendor selection
Standardize vendor intake and classification criteria
Use shared tools across Legal, Procurement, and Security
Align contractual, privacy, and security decisions

Her prediction:

“By 2026, vendor risk will be run like a federation — not a silo.”

2026 Priority: Establish a cross-functional Vendor Governance Council.

5. “AI-enabled TPRM delivers broader coverage, greater efficiency, and higher-quality assessments — far beyond what manual reviews can achieve.”

This CISO stressed that the math simply does not work anymore:

“More SaaS, more AI, more integrations… and the same-size team? Without AI, you drown.”

2026 Actions:

Automate evidence ingestion and mapping
Use AI for deviation detection and document change tracking
Pre-score risk to accelerate triage
Reassign analysts from paperwork to actual risk judgment

She framed it this way:

“Automation doesn’t replace analysts. It elevates them.”

2026 Priority: Reduce manual vendor assessment workload by 50%.

6. “Criticality must dictate assessment rigor — and AI incidents need 30/60/90-day SLAs with consequences.”

This CISO was emphatic: criticality is the compass.

“You cannot review commodity SaaS tools the same way you oversee a mission-critical vendor. It’s not scalable, and it’s not defensible.”

2026 Actions:

She outlined three tiers:

Tier 1 — Business-Critical Vendors

(Those with operational continuity or regulatory impact)

Continuous monitoring
Annual deep reviews
Quarterly deltas
Contractual AI-risk disclosures

Tier 2 — Operationally Significant Vendors

Semi-annual reviews
Continuous monitoring for major triggers

Tier 3 — Low-Impact / Commodity Vendors

Automated checks only
Manual review only if triggered

Her message:

“Criticality drives oversight. Everything else is noise.”

AI Incident SLA Enforcement: 30 / 60 / 90 Days

She outlined a framework that will likely define the next era of AI governance:

AI incident remediation deadlines:

30 days — High severity
60 days — Medium severity
90 days — Low severity

But they emphasized an even bigger point:

“The SLA is meaningless if vendors don’t notify you of delays.”

Mandatory Vendor Notifications

Vendors must notify your organization if they:

Identify a critical AI-related incident
Fail to remediate within the SLA
Modify AI training or inference processes
Add AI-enabled sub-processors

If they don’t notify you?

“That’s a contractual breach. Full stop.”

2026 Priority: Enforce AI Incident SLAs with mandatory vendor notifications.

Final Insight: “2026 will separate CISOs who modernized TPRM from those who can’t defend their decisions.”

This CISO ended our interview with a sobering but accurate warning:

“Third-party risk and AI risk are merging. If your program isn’t modernized, you can’t defend it — not to your board, not to regulators, and not to yourself.”

2026 won’t simply be an evolution.

It will be a reckoning for how enterprises manage trust, supply chain exposure, and AI-driven risk.