Where will THREAT 2026 be held?

THREAT 2026 will be held in Johannesburg, ZAF.

What is the primary focus of THREAT 2026?

THREAT 2026 focuses on cybersecurity, bringing together experts to discuss digital threats and defense strategies.

When does THREAT 2026 take place?

The conference is scheduled to run for several days in the fall.

THREAT 2026

Name: THREAT 2026
Start: 2026-10-28T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-10-30T00:00:00Z
Location: Johannesburg

Oct 28–30, 2026Johannesburg, South AfricaIn-person

Registration open

THREAT 2026 is an upcoming conference focused on cybersecurity, scheduled to take place in Johannesburg, South Africa. This event brings together professionals and experts to discuss the evolving landscape of digital threats and strategies for defense. It serves as a platform for knowledge exchange and networking within the cybersecurity community.

Committees & topics

Topics
Cyber-Physical Security in Supply Chains · Securing Digital Infrastructure and Cross-Border Data · Threats to Continuity: Resilience and Risk Management · Policy, Governance, and Cross-Sector Collaboration · Emerging Technologies and Innovation

Why it matters

In an increasingly interconnected world, the security of digital infrastructure is paramount. Events like THREAT 2026 are crucial for fostering collaboration and sharing best practices among cybersecurity professionals. As cyber threats become more sophisticated, continuous learning and adaptation are essential for protecting critical systems and data.

The conference's location in ZAF highlights the growing importance of cybersecurity expertise in the African continent. Developing robust cybersecurity capabilities in regions like ZAF is vital for national security, economic stability, and the protection of individual privacy. The insights shared at this event can contribute to strengthening digital defenses not only locally but also globally, as cyber threats often transcend national borders. Understanding the nuances of these threats and developing effective countermeasures is a continuous process that requires dedicated forums for discussion and innovation.

How to prepare

Delegates preparing for THREAT 2026 should consider familiarizing themselves with current trends in cyber warfare and digital espionage. Understanding the motivations and methods of various threat actors, from state-sponsored groups to independent malicious entities, will enhance engagement with the conference's discussions. Reviewing recent high-profile cyber incidents and their implications for different sectors can also provide valuable context.

Furthermore, exploring the concept of "Critical Information Infrastructure" is highly recommended. This involves understanding which sectors are most vulnerable and why, as well as the cascading effects of disruptions to these systems. Delegates might also benefit from examining different national approaches to cybersecurity governance and regulation, as these frameworks often influence how threats are perceived and addressed. Engaging with the principles of "Dynamic Analysis" in cybersecurity can also provide a deeper understanding of threat detection and response mechanisms.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

South Africa

As the host nation, ZAF is keenly interested in strengthening its cybersecurity posture and fostering regional expertise.

Role in topic

ZAF is a significant economic hub in Africa, making it a target for various cyber threats. Hosting THREAT 2026 demonstrates its commitment to developing robust digital defenses and becoming a leader in cybersecurity within the continent. The event provides an opportunity for ZAF to showcase its capabilities and learn from international experts.

United States

The USA maintains a proactive stance on global cybersecurity, often sharing intelligence and best practices.

Role in topic

The USA, with its advanced technological infrastructure and significant cybersecurity industry, plays a crucial role in global cybersecurity discussions. Experts from the USA are likely to contribute insights on emerging threats, defensive strategies, and international cooperation frameworks, influencing the discourse at the conference.

China

CHN is a major player in the global digital landscape, with a complex and often debated role in cybersecurity.

Role in topic

CHN's extensive digital infrastructure and significant technological advancements position it as a key country in global cybersecurity discussions. Its approach to cyber governance and its role in the development of new technologies will be of interest, particularly concerning data security and critical infrastructure protection.

Germany

DEU emphasizes data privacy and robust digital infrastructure protection within its cybersecurity strategy.

Role in topic

DEU, as a leading economy in Europe, places a high priority on cybersecurity, particularly concerning industrial control systems and data privacy. Its contributions to the conference might focus on regulatory frameworks, technological solutions for critical infrastructure, and international cooperation against cybercrime.

Japan

JPN focuses on securing its critical infrastructure and preparing for future cyber challenges.

Role in topic

JPN's advanced technological landscape and reliance on digital systems make robust cybersecurity a national imperative. Its perspective at the conference could center on securing critical national infrastructure, developing resilient systems, and fostering international partnerships to combat sophisticated cyber threats.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Cyber-Physical Security in Supply Chains

Modern supply chains fuse physical logistics with deeply networked operational technology (OT), industrial control systems, and software dependencies. Incidents over the past decade — from the 2017 NotPetya attack that paralyzed Maersk's port operations, to the 2020 SolarWinds compromise, to the 2021 Colonial Pipeline ransomware shutdown — demonstrated that a single upstream intrusion can cascade across borders, sectors, and continents. The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent semiconductor shortages further exposed how concentrated chokepoints in chip fabrication, rare earth processing, and shipping create both economic and security vulnerabilities. Governments have responded with industrial policy and regulation rather than coordinated international rules. The United States passed the CHIPS and Science Act and issued executive orders on software bills of materials (SBOMs); the European Union adopted the NIS2 Directive and the Cyber Resilience Act; China continues its dual-circulation strategy and export controls on critical minerals. The result is a fragmented compliance landscape in which multinational firms must reconcile divergent obligations on vendor screening, secure-by-design requirements, and disclosure of cyber-physical incidents. The core dispute today is how to secure interdependent supply chains without fully decoupling them. States must weigh the security gains of friend-shoring and supplier diversification against the efficiency costs, while smaller economies fear being squeezed out of critical technology ecosystems. Standard-setting bodies, port authorities, and OT vendors increasingly sit alongside states as de facto governance actors.

Key players

Securing Digital Infrastructure and Cross-Border Data

The internet's physical and logical infrastructure — submarine cables, data centers, cloud platforms, DNS, and routing protocols — has become a strategic asset. High-profile cable cuts in the Baltic Sea, Red Sea, and Taiwan Strait between 2023 and 2025, alongside persistent state-linked intrusions against telecommunications providers, have moved digital infrastructure protection from a technical concern to a top-tier national security issue. At the same time, data itself has become a contested resource, governed by an expanding patchwork of localization, transfer, and access regimes. The legal architecture is unsettled. The EU-US Data Privacy Framework replaced the invalidated Privacy Shield but remains under litigation; China's Data Security Law and Personal Information Protection Law impose strict outbound transfer reviews; India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act and similar laws across the Global South assert sovereign control over citizen data. The UN Open-Ended Working Group on ICT has produced non-binding norms of responsible state behavior in cyberspace, but enforcement remains weak, and a proposed UN Cybercrime Convention has divided states over scope and human-rights safeguards. The central tension is between an open, interoperable internet and the legitimate demands of national security, privacy, and economic policy. Delegates must address how to protect cables and cloud infrastructure from sabotage, how to reconcile divergent data regimes for trade and law enforcement, and how to prevent the fragmentation — or "splinternet" — that many fear is already underway.

Key players

Threats to Continuity: Resilience and Risk Management

The compounding shocks of the past decade — COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, climate-driven disasters, ransomware epidemics, and bank failures — have shifted policy attention from prevention alone to systemic resilience and continuity of operations. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Financial Stability Board's work on operational resilience, and national critical infrastructure protection regimes all reflect a growing consensus that catastrophic disruption is a question of when, not whether. Yet resilience policy remains uneven. Wealthy states have invested in stress testing, strategic reserves, and redundancy in energy, finance, and telecommunications. Many developing countries face the same systemic risks with far fewer resources and limited access to reinsurance, cyber insurance, or sovereign liquidity backstops. Cross-border interdependencies — in payments, shipping, cloud services, and pharmaceuticals — mean that a continuity failure in one jurisdiction can rapidly become a global incident, as seen in the 2024 CrowdStrike outage that grounded flights and disrupted hospitals worldwide. The debate centers on how to define, measure, and finance resilience as a public good. Questions include whether minimum continuity standards should be internationally harmonized, how to share threat intelligence across borders without compromising security, and how to ensure that risk transfer mechanisms reach vulnerable states and populations rather than concentrating protection among large incumbents.

Key players

Policy, Governance, and Cross-Sector Collaboration

Security threats now routinely cut across the boundaries that traditional governance was built to respect: between public and private, civilian and military, domestic and international. Critical infrastructure is overwhelmingly privately owned, frontier technologies are developed in commercial labs, and threat actors exploit jurisdictional seams. In response, governments have stood up cross-sector mechanisms — Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISACs), public-private cyber task forces, and joint research programs — but coordination remains ad hoc and unevenly resourced. Multilateral governance has struggled to keep pace. The UN Global Digital Compact, adopted in 2024 as part of the Pact for the Future, sets out commitments on digital cooperation, AI governance, and data, but implementation depends on national policy and on emerging bodies such as the proposed Independent International Scientific Panel on AI. Regional approaches — the EU's regulatory model, ASEAN's consensus-based cyber cooperation, and the African Union's Malabo Convention — have produced divergent baselines for accountability, transparency, and enforcement. The core challenge is designing governance that is agile enough for fast-moving threats yet legitimate enough to bind diverse stakeholders. Delegates must weigh binding treaties against voluntary norms, debate the role of industry and civil society in standard-setting, and consider how to ensure that smaller states and the Global South have meaningful influence over rules that will shape their economies and security.

Key players

Emerging Technologies and Innovation

A cluster of fast-maturing technologies — generative and agentic AI, quantum computing and post-quantum cryptography, advanced biotechnology, low-earth-orbit satellite networks, and next-generation connectivity — is reshaping the security and economic landscape. The release of large-scale foundation models from 2022 onward catalyzed national AI strategies, export controls on advanced chips, and a wave of safety institutes in the UK, US, Japan, Singapore, and the EU. Quantum advances threaten to break widely deployed public-key cryptography, prompting NIST's 2024 post-quantum standards and a multi-year migration challenge for governments and industry. Governance responses are proliferating but uncoordinated. The EU AI Act establishes a risk-based regulatory framework; the US relies on a mix of executive orders, voluntary commitments, and sectoral rules; China combines permissive industrial policy with strict content and algorithm regulation. International processes — the Bletchley, Seoul, and Paris AI summits, the G7 Hiroshima Process, and UN initiatives following the Global Digital Compact — have produced principles but few enforceable commitments. Meanwhile, dual-use risks in biotechnology and the militarization of space-based assets raise questions long associated with traditional arms control. For policymakers, the central question is how to capture the innovation upside while managing concentration, misuse, and systemic risk. This includes safeguarding research integrity, ensuring equitable access to compute and talent, aligning export controls with legitimate scientific exchange, and building credible safety evaluation regimes for the most capable systems.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for THREAT 2026.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Trump's Economic Reset

GOP Promotes Trump's Tax Savings on Deadline

Howard Lutnick's Senate Testimony on 2027 Bud

Bhagwant Mann Launches Punjab Campaign Summit

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Dynamic Analysis

Gender Dynamics Across Cultures

Engagement Strategies

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Policy Brief Writing

Cross-Cultural Communication

Crisis Management

Advanced Negotiation

South Africa October 2026

By committee

Frequently asked questions

THREAT 2026

Oct 28–30, 2026Johannesburg, South AfricaIn-person

Registration open

Committees & topics

Topics
Cyber-Physical Security in Supply Chains · Securing Digital Infrastructure and Cross-Border Data · Threats to Continuity: Resilience and Risk Management · Policy, Governance, and Cross-Sector Collaboration · Emerging Technologies and Innovation

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

South Africa

As the host nation, ZAF is keenly interested in strengthening its cybersecurity posture and fostering regional expertise.

Role in topic

United States

The USA maintains a proactive stance on global cybersecurity, often sharing intelligence and best practices.

Role in topic

China

CHN is a major player in the global digital landscape, with a complex and often debated role in cybersecurity.

Role in topic

Germany

DEU emphasizes data privacy and robust digital infrastructure protection within its cybersecurity strategy.

Role in topic

Japan

JPN focuses on securing its critical infrastructure and preparing for future cyber challenges.

Role in topic

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Cyber-Physical Security in Supply Chains

Key players

Securing Digital Infrastructure and Cross-Border Data

Key players

Threats to Continuity: Resilience and Risk Management

Key players

Policy, Governance, and Cross-Sector Collaboration

Key players

Emerging Technologies and Innovation

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for THREAT 2026.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Trump's Economic Reset

GOP Promotes Trump's Tax Savings on Deadline

Howard Lutnick's Senate Testimony on 2027 Bud

Bhagwant Mann Launches Punjab Campaign Summit

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Dynamic Analysis

Gender Dynamics Across Cultures

Engagement Strategies

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Policy Brief Writing

Cross-Cultural Communication

Crisis Management

Advanced Negotiation

South Africa October 2026

By committee

THREAT 2026

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Cyber-Physical Security in Supply Chains

Securing Digital Infrastructure and Cross-Border Data

Threats to Continuity: Resilience and Risk Management

Policy, Governance, and Cross-Sector Collaboration

Emerging Technologies and Innovation

Resources

South Africa’s G20 Presidency: Lessons Learned

International Conference on Public Administration and Development Alternatives (IPADA) 2026

Africa Aerospace and Defence (AAD) 2026 Conference

63rd AEASA Conference 2026

Nineteenth International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Twenty-Third International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Frequently asked questions

THREAT 2026

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Cyber-Physical Security in Supply Chains

Securing Digital Infrastructure and Cross-Border Data

Threats to Continuity: Resilience and Risk Management

Policy, Governance, and Cross-Sector Collaboration

Emerging Technologies and Innovation

Resources

South Africa’s G20 Presidency: Lessons Learned

International Conference on Public Administration and Development Alternatives (IPADA) 2026

Africa Aerospace and Defence (AAD) 2026 Conference

63rd AEASA Conference 2026

Nineteenth International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Twenty-Third International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Frequently asked questions

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

Related conferences

South Africa’s G20 Presidency: Lessons Learned

International Conference on Public Administration and Development Alternatives (IPADA) 2026

Africa Aerospace and Defence (AAD) 2026 Conference

63rd AEASA Conference 2026

Nineteenth International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Twenty-Third International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Frequently asked questions

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

Related conferences

South Africa’s G20 Presidency: Lessons Learned

International Conference on Public Administration and Development Alternatives (IPADA) 2026

Africa Aerospace and Defence (AAD) 2026 Conference

63rd AEASA Conference 2026

Nineteenth International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Twenty-Third International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Frequently asked questions