What CISOs Learned in 2025: The 5 Data Security Priorities Coming in 2026
2025 was a pivotal year for Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs). As cyber threats surged and digital acceleration transformed business, CISOs gained more influence in boardrooms but also took on greater accountability. The old model of perimeter-based defense has ended. Security strategies now focus on resilience and real-time visibility with sensitive data protection at the core.
As 2026 approaches, CISOs are turning this year’s lessons into a proactive, AI-smart, and business-aligned strategy. This article highlights the top CISO priorities for 2026, the industry’s shift from prevention to resilience, and how Sentra supports security leaders in this new phase.
Lessons from 2025: Transparency, AI Risk, and Platform Resilience
Over the past year, CISOs encountered high-profile breaches and shifting demands. According to the Splunk 2025 CISO Report an impressive 82% reported direct interactions with CEOs, and 83% regularly attended board meetings. Still, only 29% of board members had cybersecurity experience, leading to frequent misalignment around budgets, innovation, and staffing.
The data is clear: 76% of CISOs expected a significant cyberattack, but 58% felt unprepared, as reported in the Proofpoint 2025 Voice of the CISO Report. Many CISOs struggled with overwhelming tool sprawl and alert fatigue, 76% named these as major challenges. The rapid growth in cloud, SaaS, and GenAI environments left major visibility gaps, especially for unstructured and shadow data. Most of all, CISOs concluded that resilience - quick detection, rapid response, and keeping the business running, matters more than just preventing attacks. This shift is changing the way security budgets will be spent in 2026.
The Evolution of DSPM: From Inventory to Intelligent, AI-Aware Defense
First generation data security posture management (DSPM) tools focused on identifying assets and manually classifying data. Now, CISOs must automatically map, classify, and assign risk scores to data - structured, unstructured, or AI-generated - across cloud, on-prem and SaaS environments, instantly. If organizations lack this capability, critical data remains at risk (Data as the Core Focus in the Cloud Security Ecosystem).
AI brings both opportunity and risk. CISOs are working to introduce GenAI security policies while facing challenges like data leakage, unsanctioned AI projects, and compliance issues. DSPM solutions that use machine learning and real-time policy enforcement have become essential.
The Top Five CISO Priorities in 2026
- Secure and Responsible AI: As AI accelerates across the business, CISOs must ensure it does not introduce unmanaged data risk. The focus will be on maintaining visibility and control over sensitive data used by AI systems, preventing unintended exposure, and establishing governance that allows the company to innovate with AI while protecting trust, compliance, and brand reputation.
- Modern Data Governance: As sensitive data sprawls across on-prem, cloud, SaaS, and data lakes, CISOs face mounting compliance pressure without clear visibility into where that data resides. The priority will be establishing accurate classification and governance of sensitive, unstructured, and shadow data - not only to meet regulatory obligations, but to proactively reduce enterprise risk, limit blast radius, and strengthen overall security posture.
- Tool Consolidation: As cloud and application environments grow more complex, CISOs are under pressure to reduce data sprawl without increasing risk. The priority is consolidating fragmented cloud and application security tools into unified platforms that embed protection earlier in the development lifecycle, improve risk visibility across environments, and lower operational overhead. For boards, this shift represents both stronger security outcomes and a clearer return on security investment through reduced complexity, cost, and exposure.
- Offensive Security/Continuous Testing: One-time security assessments can no longer keep pace with AI-driven and rapidly evolving threats. CISOs are making continuous offensive security a core risk-management practice, regularly testing environments across hardware, cloud, and SaaS to expose real-world vulnerabilities. For the board, this provides ongoing validation of security effectiveness and reduces the likelihood of unpleasant surprises from unknown exposures. Some exciting new AI red team solutions are appearing on the scene such as 7ai, Mend.io, Method Security, and Veria Labs.
- Zero Trust Identity Governance: Identity has become the primary attack surface, making advanced governance essential rather than optional. CISOs are prioritizing data-centric, Zero Trust identity controls to limit excessive access, reduce insider risk, and counter AI-enabled attacks. At the board level, this shift is critical to protecting sensitive assets and maintaining resilience against emerging threats.
These areas show a greater need for automation, better context, and clearer reporting for boards.
Sentra Enables Secure and Responsible AI with Modern Data Governance
As AI becomes central to business strategy, CISOs are being held accountable for ensuring innovation does not outpace security, governance, or trust. Secure and Responsible AI is no longer about policy alone, it requires continuous visibility into the sensitive data flowing into AI systems, control over shadow and AI-generated data, and the ability to prevent unintended exposure before it becomes a business risk.
At the same time, Modern Data Governance has emerged as a foundational requirement. Exploding data volumes across cloud, SaaS, data lakes, and on-prem environments have made traditional governance models ineffective. CISOs need accurate classification, unified visibility, and enforceable controls that go beyond regulatory checkboxes to actively reduce enterprise risk.
Sentra brings these priorities together by giving security leaders a clear, real-time understanding of where sensitive data lives, how it is being used - including by AI - and where risk is accumulating across the organization. By unifying DSPM and Data Detection & Response (DDR), Sentra enables CISOs to move from reactive security to proactive governance, supporting AI adoption while maintaining compliance, resilience, and board-level confidence.
Looking ahead to 2026, the CISOs who lead will be those who can see, govern, and secure their data everywhere it exists and ensure it is used responsibly to power the next phase of growth. Sentra provides the foundation to make that possible.
Read the Complete Guide to Data Security Posture Management or book a demo to see how Sentra’s DSPM + DDR can offer both board-level confidence and real protection.
Conclusion
The CISO’s role in 2025 shifted from putting out fires to driving change alongside business leadership. Expectations will keep rising in 2026; balancing board expectations, the opportunities and threats of AI, and constant new risks takes a smart platform and real-time clarity.
Sentra delivers the foundation and intelligence CISOs need to build resilience, stay compliant, and fuel data-powered AI growth with secure data. Those who can see, secure, and respond wherever their data lives will lead. Sentra is your partner to move forward with confidence in 2026.
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Yair brings a wealth of experience in cybersecurity and data product management. In his previous role, Yair led product management at Microsoft and Datadog. With a background as a member of the IDF's Unit 8200 for five years, he possesses over 18 years of expertise in enterprise software, security, data, and cloud computing. Yair has held senior product management positions at Datadog, Digital Asset, and Microsoft Azure Protection.
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