EU faces ‘substantial’ cybersecurity threats

AI is accelerating vulnerability discovery and exploitation, ENISA says.

Akshaya Asokan Cybersecurity Reporter · November 11, 2026 · 2 min read

European Union flags outside the European Commission building in Brussels

The European Union is continuing to face “substantial” cybersecurity threats, as advancements in artificial intelligence capabilities accelerate vulnerability discovery and exploitation, the EU cyber agency warned.

In a report published on Tuesday on the state of cybersecurity in the trading bloc, the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity, or ENISA, said artificial intelligence is acting as a “force multiplier” and is “industrialising vulnerability discovery.”

With hackers actively weaponizing zero-day flaws, ENISA said frontier AI will “bring down discovery time from days to hours.”

The report comes against the backdrop of attacks on supermarket refrigeration controllers in France that caused considerable material damage, fires and food losses at more than 700 retail sites. The country on Monday attributed the attacks to a unit linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“Challenges persist and recent developments not only in frontier AI models but also cyber incidents in refrigeration systems across the EU underline the operational gaps and the need for timely information sharing and coordination,” said Juhan Lepassaar, ENISA’s executive director.

“Common situational awareness must be strengthened and alignment in critical sectors policies must be increased.”

Although the overall cybersecurity posture improved in the trading bloc, with the EU implementing two cornerstone critical infrastructure and supply chain security measures – the Network and Information Security Directive 2 (NIS2) and the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) – ENISA notes that gaps persist in their implementation.

This is specifically seen in the case of Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure under NIS2 and vulnerability notification requirements under the CRA, intended at establishing a legal measure for disclosing and reporting software vulnerabilities. ENISA added these measures are “unevenly” implemented in the region.

“The main challenge is no longer initial policy uptake, but achieving greater operational maturity, stronger convergence across national approaches, and more consistent implementation across the full vulnerability management lifecycle,” ENISA added.

Akshaya Asokan Cybersecurity Reporter

Akshaya Asokan is a U.K.-based cybersecurity and technology journalist with experience covering nation‑state hacking operations, cyber and tech policy, and emerging cybercrime trends. She previously served as the senior European cybersecurity correspondent for Information Security Media Group’s Global News Desk. Before that, she reported on IT developments for IDG Media and covered artificial intelligence and machine learning for Analytics India Magazine. Earlier in her career, she wrote on sexual and religious minority rights as a reporter for The New Indian Express.