As we close out another busy month across the transportation sector and the end of 2025 draws closer, the National Motor Freight Traffic Association, Inc. (NMFTA)™ stands focused on cybersecurity and reducing cyber-enabled cargo theft. We announced a major change a few weeks ago where non-Class 8 carriers will need to get license and address verification as part of Standard Carrier Alpha Code® (SCAC®). NMFTA sees this as an effort to ensure drivers are not getting impersonated and addresses are valid.
At NMFTA, this month has marked a major milestone as well. The team has been hard at work finalizing its 2026 Transportation Industry Cybersecurity Trends Report. While I won’t pre-empt the full release, I can assure you that this year’s report represents the most deeply researched, data-driven, and operationally relevant trend assessment our team has ever produced. It builds on the strong foundation of the previous editions while broadening the analytic lens, incorporating more sources of threat intelligence, and capturing a wider set of operational realities across carriers, brokers, shippers, technology vendors, and law enforcement.
The result is a forward-looking, highly practical assessment of where the threat landscape stands today and where it is headed through 2026. If there is one message worth highlighting in advance, it is this: Trucking has entered a new era of cybersecurity maturity, collaboration, and strategic alignment.
The past year saw cyber threats evolve in both sophistication and speed, from artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted social engineering to expanded supply chain compromises, and the continued rise of cyber-enabled cargo theft. However, the story of 2025 was not a simple story of increasing risk, it was also one of increasing resilience. The report will cover significant gains in cybersecurity awareness, improved cybersecurity control baselines across the industry, coordinated intelligence sharing, and a growing recognition that cybersecurity is an essential ingredient in operational resilience.
These gains are made even more encouraging by the fact that they were not isolated to the largest fleets. Mid-size carriers, and even smaller fleets and individual owner operators, are making meaningful strides in areas like phishing resistance, incident response, and vendor security management. These improvements collectively indicate an industry-wide shift from reactive defense to proactive risk management, marking a critical step up the cybersecurity maturity ladder for the industry.
One of the most encouraging findings in the report is the rapid expansion of collaborative defense across the sector. Fleets are actively sharing indicators of compromise at unprecedented rates. Brokers and shippers are integrating cybersecurity validation into their partnership decisions. Insurers are echoing the same cybersecurity baseline recommendations heard from cybersecurity experts in the industry and the industry is consistently expecting improved cybersecurity from vendors, improving the adoption of secure-by-design principles from technology vendors.
The wall between cybersecurity and operations is beginning to disappear. Leaders across maintenance, dispatch, human resources, and finance are more frequently being involved in security discussions and business continuity exercises. This increase in cross-functional security planning is a powerful indicator of organizational resilience and when seen at scale across the industry serves as a significant cause for optimism about the industry’s ability to rise to the challenges in the year ahead.
2026 will bring real challenges; accelerated attack automation, increasing persuasive AI-assisted fraud, and a continued rise in cyber-enabled cargo theft to name a few. But the industry is not walking into these challenges blind. The report outlines not only where the risks lie, but also where the industry is already adapting successfully and where strategic investments are paying off.
This year we can confidently say that industry learning curves are gaining ground against attacker innovation curves. This doesn’t eliminate risk (in fact it broadens the gap between prepared fleets and unprepared ones), but it does give executives a tangible way to move their organization into the more resilient category.
In my role at NMFTA, I have the privilege of seeing firsthand how much progress our sector has made over the past 12 months. This progress is often achieved quietly, collaboratively, and also under pressure. What I see today is an industry that refuses to be defined by the threats it faces, but instead by the unity with which it responds.
With government partnerships back in full motion, the most comprehensive report we’ve ever produced being prepared for release, and fleets demonstrating rising levels of cybersecurity maturity, 2026 is shaping up to be a pivotal year, not just for cybersecurity, but for the resilience of the trucking industry as a whole.
We look forward to sharing the report this month at www.nmfta.org. The road ahead will be challenging, but this industry knows how to do hard things well. When we move together, we move the entire supply chain forward.
