5 tech trends for 2026, according to Edge UOL

Based on proprietary analysis, the company highlights the themes that will guide the digital security and IT markets this year

Over the past year, the cybersecurity landscape has undergone significant changes. The expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing has pressured traditional architectures and demanded new protection strategies. At the same time, additional challenges emerged, such as the use of AI by threat actors, which increased the sophistication of threats and intensified the attack-defense cycle. As a result, companies have had to strengthen digital resilience, which has become a top priority.

Despite these transformations, the market must continue to update itself, especially in the security field. Given this scenario, Edge UOL lists five technological trends for 2026 that can guide corporate action planning:

1. AI Governance and Ethics: With the advancement of the AI Legal Framework in Brazil, the priority shifts toward practical compliance with new regulations. The expectation is an increasing use of governance platforms that ensure transparency and traceability while preventing bias, especially in critical areas such as healthcare, finance, and HR. “Ethics in the use of AI will cease to be a concept and become a compliance requirement,” says Rodrigo Rangel Lobo, COO of Edge UOL.
2. Sovereign Cloud and Workload Repatriation: The concept of the sovereign cloud is gaining momentum with the Tax Reform, which is expected to consolidate and expand incentives such as REDATA (Special Regime for Data Centers). This fiscal modernization will significantly reduce infrastructure costs in the country, facilitating workload repatriation – the movement of bringing critical systems and data back to Brazil. By keeping data within national territory, companies seek not only tax benefits but also strengthened compliance with the LGPD and greater control over their operations.
3. From SecaaS to Zero Trust: The rise in Pix-related fraud and ransomware attacks is shifting companies’ defensive strategies. The outlook points toward the procurement of Security as a Service (SecaaS) and the massive adoption of the Zero Trust concept within corporate architecture. “In this model, the rule is ‘never trust, always verify,’ with every access continuously validated,” explains Lobo. “This secures hybrid work and prevents an intruder from moving freely through the corporate network if they manage to enter the system.”
4. Defensive AI: AI is evolving from a supporting tool to the foundation of the entire security infrastructure. The focus now is on predictive defense: identifying and blocking threats before they happen, as well as automatically fixing vulnerabilities. AI has become indispensable as it is the only technology capable of processing the massive volume of alerts and reacting at the speed required against machine-to-machine attacks.
5. Continuity and Response Efficiency: The organizational focus is migrating from simple Disaster Recovery to digital resilience. Having a backup is no longer enough – the priority now is the speed at which operations return to normal after an incident. The goal is to ensure that, even in the face of data-corrupting attacks like ransomware, critical systems are restored in minutes or hours, ensuring business continuity and operational efficiency.

“The year 2026 will define a turning point in Brazil’s technological maturity. With the new AI Legal Framework and Tax Reform incentives, companies will be urged to balance ethics, data sovereignty, and predictive defense in the same equation to ensure business continuity and competitiveness. By combining fiscal efficiency with local infrastructure security, we will deliver what the global market demands most for the coming years: response agility and protection against instabilities,” concludes Lobo.