Written by Kaitlyn Gomez
Houston is a city built on strength. Its energy sector generates more than $600 billion in economic output, its Texas Medical Center is the largest of its kind in the world, and Port Houston anchors global shipping routes. Yet, according to the Top Security Trends for Houston Leaders in 2026 report, the city’s greatest vulnerability isn’t in aging software or traditional perimeter defenses. It lies in runtime: the moment when applications, AI models, and vendor systems are live and trusted.
In 2025, attackers refined their playbook, targeting runtime conditions with tactics that perimeter firewalls and pre-deployment scans could not catch. Exploited APIs, poisoned AI models, and vendor code behaving maliciously only after integration are now common. For 2026, the message is unmistakable: Houston’s weakest link is what happens in real time.
Energy: Exploits in Motion
The oil and gas industry exemplifies this risk. Verizon’s 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report found vulnerability exploitation climbing rapidly, with third-party involvement doubling year over year. In operational technology environments, downtime is costly and disrupts global supply chains.Zscaler’s ThreatLabz report added that ransomware attacks against energy firms are among the steepest climbers worldwide. But rather than focusing solely on encryption, attackers are exfiltrating sensitive data and hijacking APIs. Miggo Security warns that runtime monitoring is the missing safeguard here: it is the only way to catch code injections and anomalous activity before an incident escalates into widespread disruption.
Healthcare: When Intrusions Reach Patients
If energy represents financial risk, healthcare represents human risk. Nearly half of healthcare breaches involve system intrusions, according to Verizon, and many stem from vulnerabilities in IoMT devices or vendor integrations. For Houston’s Texas Medical Center, it’s a compliance issue and a matter of patient safety.Recent incidents at Change Healthcare and Ascension showed how runtime breaches can halt billing, cancel appointments, and slow emergency care. In Houston, where one hospital’s disruption could ripple across the region, visibility into how systems behave once live is critical. As the report notes, runtime monitoring of IoMT networks and third-party systems could mean the difference between an inconvenience and a life-threatening interruption.
AI: The New Attack Surface
Artificial intelligence has quickly become both a defensive tool and a target. Deloitte found that AI is accelerating phishing and exploit discovery, while Arctic Wolf reported that 99% of leaders expect AI to influence budgets this year. However, the vulnerabilities AI introduces often surface only after deployment, such as poisoned training data, malicious prompt injections, or AI-generated code behaving unpredictably in production.For Houston’s energy operators, hospitals, and logistics providers, these risks are magnified by the scale of AI adoption. Miggo emphasizes that securing AI requires more than static checks, but also demands runtime oversight of prompts, outputs, and model behavior to expose manipulations as they happen.
Supply Chains and Shadow AI: The Hidden Weak Links
Houston’s reliance on third-party vendors and contractors compounds the problem. Verizon reports that third-party involvement in breaches doubled in 2025, and Health-ISAC flags supply chain compromise as one of the top five healthcare risks. Even seemingly safe vendor code can become dangerous once it is deployed.Meanwhile, IBM has identified “shadow AI” as a growing enterprise risk, as unsanctioned workloads create vulnerabilities outside official oversight. For Houston’s hybrid operations, the attack surface is sprawling. The report argues that runtime telemetry is the only way to validate vendor code and monitor shadow AI before they spiral into systemic failures.
Miggo’s Perspective: Closing the Gap
The white paper concludes that runtime is where the fight must be won. Pre-deployment testing and shift-left security reduce known risks, but they cannot predict live behaviors. Miggo addresses this gap by mapping code paths in production, proving which vulnerabilities can actually be exploited. Its WAF Copilot converts that intelligence into precise, app-specific shields. In AI environments, Miggo applies the same logic to track prompts and model interactions, catching poisoning and misuse as they unfold.For Houston’s leaders, this means resilience is no longer just about firewalls. It requires lifecycle defense: systems validated before release and continuously safeguarded in production.
Runtime as Houston’s Defining Challenge
The report’s most striking finding is that Houston’s critical sectors are being tested in real time. The weakest link isn’t outdated hardware or missing patches. It’s the assumption that security ends at deployment.As attackers increasingly target runtime conditions, Houston leaders must choose whether to remain reactive or adopt defenses that evolve as fast as the threats themselves. Miggo’s perspective is clear: resilience in 2026 will depend on proving, in the moment, that critical systems can withstand whatever adversaries throw at them.
