Forget Predictions: Tech Leaders’ Actual 2026 Resolutions

People have strong feelings about New Year’s resolutions. I know people who spend their entire December reflecting and then in January planning for the year ahead. I also know people who think it’s all a waste of time. Regardless of where your opinion lands on this spectrum, can we agree that resolutions are better than predictions?

We are hammered this time of year with everyone’s predictions about what will happen next. It’s easy to make a prediction publicly, because we all know that none of us can really predict the future, so we’re very forgiving when predictions don’t materialize. We’re also so distracted that we forget what people predicted anyways. Resolutions, on the other hand, are about what we will do. Or, like my resolution to eat less candy, what we will try to do, because, let’s face it: Giving up all sweets feels criminal. Action rather than pontification.

I chatted with some folks in the community this December to learn more about the resolutions they have planned in 2026, specifically in the world of technology. Some are business-oriented while others are personal. Either way, together, I hope they give you some inspiration and curiosity as we head into 2026.

Jeremy Colvin, senior technical marketing engineer at Isovalent, a Cisco company:

• “My New Year’s technology resolution for 2026 is: Move beyond the firehose model of security data and focus on signal that actually drives decisions.

“For years, security teams have been forced to stream every event in real time, pushing massive volumes of data out of the kernel and into downstream systems, hoping value would emerge later. The reality is that most events aren’t worth exporting, and that approach creates unnecessary overhead, noise and friction for both platform and security teams.

“In 2026, the resolution should be making runtime security lighter, smarter and more intentional. That means collecting rich, kernel-level telemetry with extremely low overhead, surfacing high-risk behavior immediately through real-time alerts and exporting aggregated, context-rich data that’s actually useful for investigation, policy decisions and response.”

Nadav Cornberg, CEO and cofounder, Eve Security:

• “My New Year’s technology resolution for 2026 is simple: We have to stop treating AI agents like tools and start securing them like actors. Agentic AI is operating inside our environments, making decisions, taking actions and interacting with systems at machine speed. Yet most security tools and platforms are still built to monitor humans in the loop, not autonomous agents. That gap is becoming one of the most dangerous blind spots in enterprise security. The most important question in the new year won’t be whether you’re using AI agents, but whether you can trust and control them. My resolution is to make sure enterprises can.”

Crystal Morin, Sysdig senior cybersecurity strategist:

• “In 2026, my resolution is to intentionally introduce my kids to AI in a thoughtful, age-appropriate way. Starting with my 10-year-old. I want him to understand what AI and LLMs [large language models] are, how they work, what happens to the data we put into them and how to use them as tools for learning and creativity, not as shortcuts. My goal is to do this while practicing and modeling a ‘trust but verify’ approach. For my younger kids, who are both 8, my resolution is to teach them how to better use technology and AI to create things, such as crafts, designs, ideas and projects, instead of just passively consuming content.”

Brian Proffitt, senior manager, community outreach at Red Hat:

• “My tech resolution would be to start using and training some small LLMs to work with my existing task management tools to help keep the 5.2 billion (roughly estimated 🙂 ) tasks I have going at any one time organized.”

Conor Sherman, Sysdig CISO in residence:

• “My 2026 tech resolution is twofold. First, I want to build in more digital white space for my family. That is ideally one full day a week with little to no technology, to reduce reliance on screens and build real personal resilience. Second, as a security leader, I’m committing to a deeper, more structured exploration of AI agents. My goal is to more actively help security teams understand and leverage the defensive capabilities AI can bring to modern infrastructure.

Ross Turk, developer and community relations, most recently with Flox:

• “My personal resolution for 2026 is to build something new every single day. For 30years I’ve been tossing ideas around in my head and deciding which ones I had the energy, focus and skill to approach. Now I can build them all, one per day, and see which ones have wings. Software development hasn’t gotten easier, but it’s gotten quicker. I plan to build tools that do the stuff I didn’t think was worth the effort before. Open source has been about “scratching your own itch” for a really long time, and now we get to see if that holds true.”

Alex Zenla, CTO and cofounder at Edera:

• “My 2026 technology resolution: Stop treating AI as a magic category and start addressing the infrastructure problems it’s actually exposing. The current hype cycle isn’t creating new challenges, it’s just making the data center and workload isolation issues we’ve ignored for years impossible to overlook. Instead of chasing AI-specific solutions, let’s build secure-by-design foundations that work whether you’re running ML models or serving cat pictures. The problems are the same; only the scale and scrutiny have changed.”

In closing, I’ll remind you that not all resolutions are about what we will do. Sometimes they’re about what we’ll stop doing. In her latest LinkedIn post, Emily Long, CEO of Edera, reflected on her own 2026 resolution: to let go of the things that no longer serve her, both personally and professionally.

Whether your 2026 resolution involves digital white space, agentic AI security, leaving the past in the past or building something new every day, the common thread is intentionality. These technology leaders aren’t making predictions about what will happen — they’re making commitments about what they’ll make happen. That’s the difference between pontification and progress.

Happy New Year! See you out there.

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