Why 2026 may be the entertainment industry’s biggest security test yet
Artificial intelligence will be the primary driver of new security risks across the global entertainment industry in 2026, expanding the attack surface from ticketing and production to distribution, gaming, and regulatory compliance, according to Kaspersky’s latest Security Bulletin.
Kaspersky’s analysis concludes that AI is no longer a peripheral tool but a core operational layer that both defenders and attackers will exploit, forcing studios, platforms, and rights holders to rethink risk management across creative and commercial systems.
The firm warns that AI-driven ticketing systems will intensify competition between pricing algorithms and scalpers, enabling real-time demand analysis, large-scale bot deployment, and dynamic resale pricing that can undermine fixed-price strategies and artist controls in secondary markets.
In content production, the growing use of cloud-based and AI-assisted visual effects tools is expected to widen supply-chain risk, as studios increasingly rely on smaller vendors and freelancers whose infrastructure may be less secure, creating new pathways for pre-release leaks of high-value assets.
Kaspersky also flags content delivery networks as an emerging concentration risk, noting that unreleased episodes, game builds, and live streams are often centralized within a limited number of providers, making them attractive targets for AI-enabled reconnaissance, credential abuse, and configuration exploitation.
Within gaming and fan communities, generative AI tools are expected to accelerate abuse patterns, including the circumvention of in-game safeguards, the creation of prohibited content, and the potential exposure of personal data through poorly governed training or fine-tuning processes.
On the regulatory front, Kaspersky anticipates tighter rules around transparency, consent, and licensing for AI-generated and AI-trained content, driving the creation of internal AI governance roles responsible for compliance across production, marketing, and distribution workflows.
The company advises entertainment organizations to treat AI systems and their underlying data as critical infrastructure, extend threat modeling to all AI-enabled processes, strengthen oversight of external vendors, harden CDN security monitoring, and implement strict governance for generative AI deployments to mitigate financial, legal, and reputational risk.
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