Annual Review

Overview 

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has put a date on a threat that security teams across Europe have been bracing for. In its 2026 Annual Review, The State of the Cyber Nation, the agency assesses it is highly likely that AI-powered malware will be used in a ransomware attack on UK Critical National Infrastructure by 2028. 

That is not a distant, speculative scenario. It is a two-year window, and it lands alongside a second judgement. By 2028, China, Russia and other nation-states will highly likely be using AI-enabled cyber capabilities routinely to pursue geopolitical goals, with the UK facing sophisticated attacks at greater scale and speed. 

The review also recorded that UK and EU member states jointly attributed a December 2025 attack on Poland’s energy grid to Russia’s FSB Centre 16. Had it succeeded, roughly 500,000 citizens could have lost power. Europe is not watching this threat from the sidelines; it is where the playbook is being tested. 

Key Takeaways 

  • 2028 is the marker. The NCSC judges AI malware will highly likely be used in ransomware against UK CNI before the end of 2028. 

  • Europe’s grid is already a target. Russia’s FSB Centre 16 was attributed to the December 2025 attack on Poland’s energy grid, and a July 2026 advisory from 18 partners in 12 countries flagged the same group exploiting vulnerable routers to reach CNI networks worldwide. 

  • China is best positioned to use AI against CNI. The NCSC rates China’s activity as the most sophisticated and sustained cyber challenge facing the UK. 

  • AI speeds up old tricks rather than inventing new ones. For large organizations, 88% of incidents the NCSC handled began through just four initial access vectors. 

  • A “patch wave” is coming. AI-assisted vulnerability discovery will shrink the time defenders have between disclosure and exploitation. 

  • The gap is widening. Organizations with legacy technology and slow remediation will become the preferred targets of both states and criminals. 

The 2028 Warning 

The NCSC’s assessment is precise about where AI makes the difference. It calls AI an almost certain “force multiplier” that improves reconnaissance, social engineering, vulnerability discovery and exploit development. The biggest effect, it says, will be faster and larger versions of existing tactics rather than brand-new attack vectors. 

Ransomware is where that acceleration hits CNI hardest. The review expects criminal adoption of AI to raise the scale and efficiency of ransomware, social engineering and exploitation. It also warns that open-source AI tools built for security researchers are likely to be repurposed to automate criminal workflows, cutting costs and raising attack volumes against less resilient targets. 

The agency is careful not to overstate today’s reality. Its Incident Management team has begun to see attackers using AI tools, but none of the observed uses enabled a new class of attack. Human operators remain essential, and the NCSC notes that losing control of an agentic AI is likely to hinder threat actors from reaching their goals. 

The review’s pessimistic 2028 scenario shows why that caveat may not last. In it, frontier AI is available to everyone from state actors to novice hackers, jailbroken models are sold in criminal marketplaces, and attribution becomes harder as capability spreads. It even describes a realistic possibility of an automated cyber actor operating beyond its operator’s control. Cloud-controlled CNI and AI-driven robotics raise the chance that a digital compromise causes physical harm. 

The NCSC stresses this is an illustration of the cost of inaction, not a forecast. But it is a scenario written by the agency responsible for defending UK infrastructure, and it is set just two years out. 

Europe: The Proving Ground for CNI Attacks 

If the UK is looking at 2028, continental Europe is already living with the threat. The NCSC names Russia as the most audacious cyber threat to the UK today. GCHQ Director Anne Keast-Butler goes further in the review’s foreword, warning that tactics Russia developed against Ukraine are now being turned more widely on states and their institutions. 

Three data points from the review frame the European picture: 

  • Poland’s energy grid (December 2025). The UK and EU member states formally attributed the attack to FSB Centre 16. If successful, it could have cut electricity to around 500,000 people. 

  • Router exploitation on a global scale (July 2026). The NCSC and 18 international partners from 12 countries issued a joint advisory on FSB Centre 16 actors exploiting vulnerable routers to target CNI networks worldwide. On the same day, the UK sanctioned 24 individuals and entities tied to destructive cyber and hybrid operations, including criminals running proxy networks linked to Russian intelligence. 

  • Operational technology in crosshairs. The review points to recent attacks on programmable logic controllers (PLCs) as evidence that organizations failing to modernize are falling behind. 

The pattern matters for anyone running energy, water, transport or telecoms in Europe. Grids, interconnectors and supply chains cross borders, and a disruptive attack in one country can cascade into its neighbors. The review also describes how cyber threats to the UK can escalate rapidly and without warning during periods of geopolitical tension. 

Add AI to this mix and the timeline compresses. A state actor that today relies on patience and known router flaws could, with AI-assisted discovery and exploitation, find and weaponize new weaknesses across thousands of European edge devices far faster than defenders can patch them. 

China is Best Positioned to Turn AI on Critical Infrastructure 

While Russia is the loudest threat, the NCSC sees China as the most capable. It judges that China highly likely has both the intent and the best position to use AI against CNI and other strategic targets. Its frontier AI programmes are expected to sharpen vulnerability identification, targeting efficiency and access operations. 

Data sits at the center of that strategy. The review describes China collecting large volumes of information from the UK and elsewhere, then using it to train models and improve capability. In the AI era, stolen data is no longer just espionage material; it is fuel. 

The UK has already acted on this. In December 2025, it sanctioned two China-based firms: i-Soon, which targeted more than 80 government and private IT systems globally, and Integrity Technology Group, which the FBI has linked to the Flax Typhoon intrusions. In April 2026, the NCSC and 15 partners across nine other countries published guidance on the covert networks most China-linked actors use to hide their activity. 

The 2028 scenario adds a further concern: China, as a leading developer, may help spread advanced AI-cyber capability to other actors, letting them hide in the noise and making attribution harder for European defenders. 

AI Runs the Old Playbook, Only Faster 

The most useful finding in the review is also the least dramatic: attackers are still getting in through the basics. Over the past year, the NCSC received 1,831 reports of cyber attacks. Of these, 337 needed its direct support, and 80 were classed as nationally significant. 

For large organizations, 88% of incidents started through four initial access vectors: 

  1. Exploiting public-facing applications 

  1. Phishing 

  1. Misuse of valid accounts 

  1. Exploiting external remote services 

Even state-linked intrusions often used flaws for which patches already existed but had not been applied quickly enough. As the review puts it, sophisticated actors do not need to be sophisticated to gain initial access; their skill shows in what they do once inside. 

This is exactly where AI changes the economics. The NCSC expects AI-assisted vulnerability discovery to give attackers more chances to hit systems before owners patch them. It is urging every organization to prepare for a “patch wave”: a surge of security updates across the technology stack, many of them critical, as AI exposes years of technical debt. 

Two further risks deserve attention: 

  • Shadow AI. Staff moving sensitive data to personal devices to use unsanctioned AI tools leaves organizations blind to where that data goes, and open to both APT groups and criminals. 

  • The widening gap. Mature, well-resourced organizations will use AI to detect and fix faster. Those running legacy systems will fall further behind and become more attractive targets. 

The financial stakes are already clear. UK government research cited in the review puts the annual cost of malicious cyber activity to UK organizations at about £14.7 billion. The 2025 attack on Jaguar Land Rover alone cost the company around £196 million in direct costs and contributed to UK GDP growing just 0.1% in Q3 2025. 

How the UK Is Fighting Back With AI 

The NCSC’s answer is to meet machine-speed attacks with machine-speed defense. Several initiatives in the review stand out: 

  • Cyber Shield. A joint NCSC and DCMS programme to build a national agentic cyber defense ecosystem over five years. The NCSC supplies the platform and intelligence, while defensive agents are built by the security market and open-source community. Early phases focus on detection and blocking, where automation is already practical. 

  • Project DROMOS. Launched in 2026 by the Government Cyber Coordination Centre and the AI Security Institute, it used frontier AI models to review government codebases. Expanded into live environments, it surfaced hundreds of potential security issues, including critical vulnerabilities. 

  • National Detect Strategy. A pilot aiming, by 2030, to ensure defenders across critical systems can detect and respond to known vulnerabilities and attacker techniques at organizational, community and national scale. 

  • Regulation and benchmarks. The Cyber Security and Resilience Bill brings new sectors into scope and adds national security powers. The new CAF Core Profile sets a minimum resilience baseline for essential services. 

There are early results. Under the Government Cyber Action Plan, the median time to fix domain-related vulnerabilities fell from 50 days to 8. The Early Warning service now covers 19,922 organizations, up 52% on last year. 

For Europe, the lesson is that partnership is now part of the defense. The review highlights the world’s first AI security standard developed through ETSI, the European standards body, as proof that allies can shape AI security while the technology is still evolving. 

National defense at machine speed also depends on seeing adversaries before they reach the network. Groups like FSB Centre 16 and China-linked operators plan, recruit, and trade access in places most defenders never look. As AI makes attribution harder, government agencies, national CERTs, and defense bodies need intelligence that tracks threat actors across the open, deep, and dark web and connects that activity to the infrastructure being targeted. Cyble Hawk is built for exactly this. It gives national security teams sovereign threat intelligence, adversary profiling, and investigative support. That means early warning of campaigns against critical infrastructure and stronger attribution when an attack does land. Book a demo to see how your agency can move from reacting to incidents to anticipating them. 

Recommendations for CNI Operators in the UK and Europe 

The NCSC’s core message is that AI did not create these weaknesses; it is exposing them faster. Operators of critical infrastructure should act on the following now: 

  1. Harden the edge first. Inventory and patch internet-facing applications, VPNs, routers, and remote access services. These are the routes FSB Centre 16 and others are actively exploiting. 

  1. Prepare for the patch wave. Build processes to test and deploy security updates more often, faster and across suppliers. Track time-to-remediate as a board-level metric. 

  1. Kill password-based access where you can. Move privileged and remote users to phishing-resistant authentication such as passkeys, and audit valid accounts for misuse. 

  1. Segment IT from OT. Limit the paths from corporate networks to PLCs and industrial control systems, and monitor those boundaries continuously. 

  1. Govern AI use internally. Map what data AI tools and agents can access, what actions they can take, and how they are monitored. Close off shadow AI with approved alternatives. 

  1. Rehearse recovery, not just prevention. Test ransomware response playbooks against scenarios where operational systems must run during disruption. Use the NCSC’s guidance on recovering from highly disruptive attacks. 

  1. Lock down the supply chain. Require baseline controls such as Cyber Essentials, or equivalent standards in EU frameworks, from suppliers with access to critical systems. 

  1. Use threat intelligence that moves at AI speed. Monitor for exploitation of newly disclosed flaws, stolen credentials, and chatter about your sector, so you can act before an incident escalates. 

  1. Start post-quantum planning. The NCSC wants discovery and migration planning finished by 2028, priority migrations by 2031 and full migration by 2035. 

Conclusion 

The NCSC has given Europe a deadline. By 2028, AI-powered ransomware against UK critical infrastructure moves from possibility to expectation, and state actors will be using AI as a routine part of their operations. The Poland grid attack and the global router campaign show the targeting is already in place; AI simply adds speed and scale. 

The agency’s own framing is a “moment of choice.” Organizations that modernize, patch fast, and build resilience now will be able to absorb what comes next. Those that defer will find AI exposing their technical debt faster than they can repay it. 

For CNI operators across the UK and Europe, the next two years are the window to close the gap. Continuous visibility into emerging vulnerabilities, active exploitation and threat actor activity will be central to staying ahead of attacks that move at machine speed. 

Source 

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