Federal Cybersecurity in 2026: Zero Trust, CMMC, and the Road Ahead

As federal agencies and industry partners move deeper into Zero Trust adoption and the realities of CMMC enforcement, 2026 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for the federal cybersecurity ecosystem. From shifting procurement models to lessons learned from government shutdowns and global cyber conflict, the decisions made now will have long-lasting implications for resilience and readiness. 

In this Q&A, Virtru CTO Wayne Chung shares his predictions for the year ahead—what’s accelerating progress, where organizations may struggle, and the headlines he hopes (and fears) we’ll see by the end of 2026.

What major trends do you see shaping the federal cybersecurity landscape in 2026?
    
I think Zero Trust will continue to be a driving feature in 2026 as the Department of War (DoW) focuses to meet their baseline compliance goal of FY2027. This will bring along new tools, capabilities, and providers easing partner’s (government and industry) adoption of Zero Trust principles.     

What progress do you expect to see around CMMC implementation in 2026? What are the biggest challenges organizations face here?

Since we will be a full year into CMMC Level 2 with C3PAO assessments, I think we will begin to have a much better understanding of what is really needed. I predict that some companies may find their self assessments were not sufficient to meet the rigor of third-party validation, and there could be a period of unsettling as widespread C3PAO assessments slowly converge to a uniform standard. I also think organizations will start learning that point-in-time assessments, while helpful, won’t be enough to keep them fully secure. 

What implications might the 2025 government shutdown have on 2026? 
    
The shutdown pushed out or ended some procurement efforts. This delay in contracting may snowball, causing vendors to delay rollout of critical protections or security processes. I don’t think it will be widespread,  but a lot of agencies and vendors were in limbo during the uncertainty of shutdown and the potential for a New Year shutdown isn’t helping there. 

How is the federal procurement process shifting? Do you expect to see more or less collaboration between public and private sectors in 2026 as a result?  

With the DoW Warfighter procurement strategy of rapid commercial adoption in play, I definitely expect to see a level of increase in collaboration between the public and private sector. If this forecast comes to fruition, it will result in an increase in newer capabilities advancing the state of the art. All the while, some government agencies will struggle with finding the right tool for their mission and systems. The commercial best-of-breed SaaS offerings may not hit the mark for the majority of on-prem organizations, which could drive more commercial cloud adoption. All that said, agencies may benefit from moving away from large capital procurements. 

What headline would you hope to see about federal cybersecurity by the end of 2026?

I’d hope to see headlines stating that Zero Trust is both well-understood and on-track for adoption by the DoW/DIB and industry at-large. 

What headline would you fear seeing?

My biggest fear would be NO headline. I mean that literally; no headlines as a result of media and telecom networks suffering outages or other disruptions. In the event the US and aligned democracies engage in defense from large scale combat operations, we know critical infrastructure will likely be targeted. 

In Ukraine, we saw media, telecom, and financial sectors impacted by cyber operations, preceding the Annexation of Crimea in 2014. The US should anticipate similar before any large scale operations in the Pacific. Ukraine's private industry, with government support, invested in securing and reinforcing their critical infrastructure following the loss of Crimea and these resources provided critical support and enabled citizen command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) during the invasion. 

The US and allied industries need to follow suit and prepare to ensure resilience and business as usual during difficult times. We want to avoid the “no headlines” scenario.