10 Major News Stories For Midmarket IT Leaders In 2025 That Will Matter In 2026
MES Computing’s most-viewed news in 2025 has implications for IT leaders in 2026.
In 2025, technology dominated the news cycles. AI wasn’t just the elephant in the room—it was a roaring tyrannosaurus rex demanding attention. From AI’s role on the geopolitical stage to the risks agentic AI can pose, MES Computing’s AI coverage was among our most-viewed content in 2025.
There were other big stories impacting midmarket IT. Changes to digital certificate lifecycles and tools to manage certificates proved to be of significant interest to midmarket IT leaders.
Quantum computing was also a hot topic. Concerns about “Q-Day” the time when quantum computers will be able to break existing encryption methods also were of interest.
Without further ado, here were the 10 biggest news stories for midmarket IT leaders in 2025 and why they will still matter in 2026.
10 Major IT News Stories For Midmarket IT Leaders In 2025 And Their Implications In 2026
AI has become a top priority not only for businesses, but for governments. In July 2025, the Trump administration revealed its AI action plan for America with the explicit goal of “winning the AI race” according to a White House press release.
The administration has been aggressive in its pursuit of American AI dominance and had made controversial moves including issuing an executive order designed to “neuter” AI regulations at the state level, The New York Times reported in December, as well as an assertion by the president that Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips would be blocked for sale to other countries.
The U.S. is currently the most AI-dominant country according to a July 2025 study by TRG Datacenters. Second in the running is the United Arab Emirates.
With predictions that a majority of businesses will move AI pilot projects into production in 2026, and that at least one major AI lab will file for an IPO, the race for AI dominance is likely to rev up worldwide this year.
For the last two years, MES Computing extensively covered the changing digital certificate/PKI landscape. That coverage was among our most widely viewed.
Shakeups in the digital certificate world began in 2024 when Google announced that it would no longer trust Entrust TLS certificates as of November that year.
More announcements followed suit. In January 2025, Apple proposed reducing the validity period for TLS/SSL certificates to a shorter expiration lifespan for security reasons. In April we reported that the CA/Browser (CA/B) Forum decided to reduce the maximum validity term of SSL/TLS certificates to 47 days by 2029.
By March 14, 2026, TLS certificates’ lifespans will shrink to 200 days. The Domain Control Validation (DVC) reuse period will also be reduced to 200 days.
If organizations have not already started planning for more strenuous digital lifecycle management, that is likely to be a focus of IT leaders in 2026.
AI innovation was a big subject of interest in 2025 for IT leaders.
While the U.S. may currently hold the world’s most AI-dominant position, a February 2025 report from patent management firm Triangle IP showed China leapfrogging over the U.S, when it comes to the number of AI patents filed.
Investors will keep AI companies in their sights in 2026. For U.S.-based venture capitalists, AI was the “driving force of US VC investment,” according to a report from Silicon Valley Bank.
Despite concerns over an AI bubble, investors are likely to throw more dollars at AI in 2026, spurring further AI innovation.
There was a lot of interest about ‘Q-Day’ — the time frame for when threat actors will have relatively easy and widespread access to quantum computing power.
In our podcast for midmarket IT leaders, Ready.Set.Midmarket!, guests Lance Smith, co-founder and CEO of Cy4Data Labs, and John E. Young, COO of Quantum eMotion America, lent their extensive expertise on the subject of Q-Day and post-quantum computing (PQC) encryption.
Both described how threat actors are currently harvesting encrypted data through cyberattacks. While the bad guys don’t have the means yet to decrypt this data, in the very near future they will have a way—through quantum computing.
While the exact date of ‘Q-Day’ is up for debate, advances in quantum computing and AI will force organizations to pay more attention to preparations for this inevitable threat in 2026.
Microsoft’s ecosystem is deeply entrenched in the midmarket and in 2025, the company embraced AI with open arms.
In the beginning of 2025, Microsoft announced a new division in its company: Core AI – Platform and Tools.
“It’s clear that we’re entering the next innings of this AI platform shift. 2025 will be about model-forward applications that reshape all application categories. More so than any previous platform shift, every layer of the application stack will be impacted,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at the time in a blog post.
A December 2025 Microsoft blog post provided a speculative roadmap for Microsoft and AI in 2026. Company executives spoke about AI’s potential.
AI will become a “digital coworker,” said Aparna Chennapragada, Microsoft’s chief product officer for AI experiences. Expect Copilot to become even more embedded in Microsoft products.
Also, the company hinted at more investment into its AI Diagnostic Orchestrator (MAI-DxO) which it said “solved complex medical cases with 85.5 percent accuracy, far above the 20 percent average for experienced physicians.”
Azure, software development, and quantum computing including Microsoft’s own Majorana 1 QC project are also mentioned in the blog post and the assumption is Microsoft will have announcements in 2026 about AI-enhanced developments with these technologies.
A kerfuffle ensued in April 2024 after the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced it would cease funding to Mitre, the nonprofit that runs the CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) program, effectively ending the program on April 16, 2024.
The move prompted raucous backlash from the cybersecurity community, forcing CISA to somewhat walk back its announcement and reassure cybersecurity professionals that it would continue to fund Mitre, extending the CVE program, although the organization did not make clear for how long.
As of a September 2025 press release, CISA outlined its roadmap for the CVE program, indicating an intent to stay involved, but also stated there would be “program enhancements” made. The cybersecurity world is sure to keep an eye on developments with the CVE program in 2026.
With 93 percent of IT leaders set to introduce autonomous AI agents within the next two years, some cybersecurity experts sounded loud alarms in 2025 about the security risks agentic AI can introduce in an organization.
“If we are allowing AI in these agentic AI workflows to kind of automate the decision-making process, there could be exploits at that point,” Ian Swanson, the CEO of Protect AI, said in an interview with MES Computing.
Cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes also issued a dire warning. “New AI agents could hold people for ransom,” it said in a report it released last year.
Clearly, in the fervor to adopt agentic AI, IT leaders will look to products and services to help keep the reins on this powerful technology in 2026.
In one of our most viewed stories of 2025, we canvassed our audience of midmarket IT leaders and asked them what bugged them most about vendors.
“AI hype,” “cold calling,” scant “try before you buy” periods, and inconsistent pricing were some of the major annoyances IT leaders sounded off on.
In 2026, this subject is worth a revisit to see if some of those peeves have been alleviated, or whether more should be added to the list of complaints.
Thirty-two percent of U.S. adults use LinkedIn, a statistic on par with the number of U.S. TikTok users, according to an April 2025 report from Hootsuite.
One of our most viewed pieces of content was a presentation at the 2025 MES Spring Summit given by social media expert Richard Bliss, founder and president of social media consulting firm BlissPoint.
One of Bliss’ top pieces of advice for mastering LinkedIn – only post once a day.
“If you post more than once a day, LinkedIn will let you do it, but it’s only testing one conversation,” he told the audience at the event.
LinkedIn has been fused with more AI capabilities. It will be interesting to see in 2026 if these capabilities enhance or hinder users’ reach on the platform.
The Trump administration made extinguishing diversity and inclusion initiatives a major priority in 2025, and many corporations fell in line, either by diminishing or eliminating their DEI programs altogether.
Women remain a minority presence in the STEM fields, accounting for only 35 percent of the STEM workforce, according to a report from Women Tech Network.
A May 2025 report from AND Digital, a software consultancy firm with a stated mission of addressing gaps in digital skills, found that despite pressure on organizations to shelf inclusivity goals, women in tech were thriving and many are optimistic about their careers.
“It is a pivotal moment for women in tech and it is incredibly encouraging to see so many women in the industry are not only thriving, but also deeply passionate about their roles. Women love tech, and this is a testament to the dedication and resilience of women who are shaping the future of the sector,” said Lisa Benjamin, VP at AND Digital, in an email interview with MES Computing.
Will that optimism continue as the momentum continues against DEI pushback? That is something we will continue to watch as 2026 unfolds.