The foundation of cyber threats 2026 began to change dramatically. For years, cybersecurity focused on protecting people: training employees not to click phishing links, enforcing strong passwords, and locking down executive accounts.
By Joas Antonio Marquez
Former Analyst, CISA Cyber Defense Division | Incident Responder (Mandiant, 2015–2023)
Contributor to MITRE ATT&CK & OWASP Agentic | OWASP member with repos on security tools/resources.
Last Updated: December 28, 2025
Goal of this report: Help defenders cut through the hype and focus on what actually matters in 2026.
Why This Year Is Different: It’s Not About More Attacks—It’s About Who (or What) Is Being Targeted
Data from Palo Alto Networks and CyberArk shows that non-human identities (NHIs)—service accounts, API keys, cloud roles, bots, and AI agents—now outnumber human users in enterprise environments by 82 to 1. For every employee on your network, there are 82 automated identities quietly syncing data, running scripts, calling APIs, and updating software.
Attackers have taken notice.
The primary vector for cyber threats 2026 is no longer tricking a human into clicking a malicious link. Instead, adversaries target over-permissioned service accounts or exploit AI coding assistants to implant backdoors that operate completely outside human oversight.
This is already happening. In 2025, Mandiant investigated a breach where an attacker leveraged a stale AWS Lambda function—a dormant NHI with active credentials—to exfiltrate customer data for 11 months without raising a single user-facing alert.
1. The New Malware Economy: Why Telegram Isn’t the “Darknet”—But It’s Still Dangerous
Back in 2023, many predicted Telegram would replace the Darknet. That didn’t happen. The Darknet is still active—but it’s become less relevant because attackers don’t need hidden forums anymore.
Instead, they’re using public, searchable platforms:
- Telegram: Not as a hidden marketplace, but as a broadcast channel. Criminals post simple messages like “RAT v4.2 – $99/month – DM for demo” and use bots to handle payments and delivery.
- Discord: Fake “gaming communities” distribute info-stealers disguised as cheat engines.
- GitHub: Repos with names like firefox-patch-fix-2025 contain Python scripts that download LummaStealer when run.
What makes this dangerous is accessibility. In the past, you needed Tor, PGP, and Bitcoin. Today, anyone with a smartphone can buy malware via Telegram and deploy it in minutes.
What you can do:
Block non-essential messaging apps (Telegram, Discord) on corporate devices unless required for business.
Use EDR tools that monitor for unusual child processes (e.g., powershell.exe launched by Telegram.exe).
Educate developers: Never run code from unverified GitHub repos—especially those with vague names and recent creation dates.
2. Geopolitical Attacks Are No Longer “Advanced”—They’re Routine
Nation-state cyber threats 2026 operations used to be rare, surgical, and targeted only at governments or defense contractors.
That’s changed.
In 2024 and 2025, Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea expanded their operations to include private-sector infrastructure, especially in energy, healthcare, and logistics. Why?
Because modern warfare is hybrid. Disabling a hospital’s billing system or slowing down a port’s cargo processing creates economic and social pressure—without firing a single bullet.
One of the most concerning trends is pre-positioning ransomware in critical systems. CISA confirmed in 2025 that multiple Russian-linked groups had deployed quiet, dormant ransomware in U.S. water and power facilities. These payloads aren’t activated for profit—they’re held in reserve to be triggered during a geopolitical crisis.
Even more alarming: OT (Operational Technology) systems are now in scope. In early 2025, a European hydropower facility was breached not through its corporate IT network, but via a third-party vendor’s remote monitoring software. The attackers gained enough access to potentially disrupt water flow—but chose not to. It was a reconnaissance run.
What you can do:
Treat all third-party remote access as high-risk—require MFA, session recording, and network segmentation Cyber Threats.
Assume your OT and IT networks are connected, even if you think they’re air-gapped. Audit cross-boundary data flows.
Participate in CISA’s Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC) for early cyber threats 2026 warnings.
3. AI Isn’t Just a Tool—It’s a New Attack Surface
Generative AI has transformed both offense and defense—but not in the ways most people think.
On the offense side, AI-generated phishing emails are now indistinguishable from human writing. In 2025, Proofpoint analyzed a campaign where attackers scraped a company’s public blog, earnings calls, and LinkedIn profiles to generate personalized emails that referenced real projects and team members. Click-through rates were over 3x higher than traditional phishing.
But the bigger risk isn’t email—it’s AI agents and coding assistants.
Developers increasingly use tools like GitHub Copilot or Amazon CodeWhisperer to auto-complete code. The problem? These models hallucinate dependencies—suggesting libraries that don’t exist or are malicious clones. In one case analyzed by Legit Security, an AI assistant recommended a package called react-utils-fix, which looked legitimate but was actually a repackaged info-stealer. Because it was auto-accepted into the CI/CD pipeline, it shipped to production in under 24 hours.
This is called “vibe coding”—trusting AI output because it “feels right.” And in 2025, it introduced 37% more supply chain vulnerabilities than the prior year.
What you can do:
Never accept AI-generated code without review. Treat it like untrusted user input.
Integrate software composition analysis (SCA) tools like Snyk or Dependabot into your CI/CD pipeline to flag unknown or suspicious packages.
Require SBOMs (Software Bill of Materials) for all third-party and AI-generated code.
4. Ransomware Has Evolved Beyond Encryption—Meet “Quadruple Extortion”
Most people know ransomware as “encrypt your files, pay to decrypt.” But that model is outdated.
Today’s ransomware groups use quadruple extortion:
- Encrypt your data
- Steal sensitive files (patient records, HR data, source code)
- Threaten to notify regulators, customers, or partners (triggering GDPR fines or reputational damage)
- Launch DDoS attacks or use AI to impersonate executives in phone calls to board members
In late 2025, Armis reported that healthcare organizations targeted with this full playbook were 68% more likely to pay—not because they couldn’t restore data, but because the combined pressure from legal, financial, and emotional angles became unbearable.
One hospital CEO described receiving a deepfake video call from what appeared to be their CFO, sobbing and begging for payment to “protect patient lives.” It was generated entirely by AI—but felt real enough to trigger a payment.
What you can do:
Train your leadership team to expect AI impersonation Cyber Threats 2026. Establish a pre-shared verbal code for all emergency financial decisions.
Assume breach: Regularly test whether stolen data could be used for extortion (e.g., “What would hurt us most if leaked?”).
Work with legal counsel to understand reporting obligations—so you’re not blindsided by regulatory threats.
Why Cyber Threats 2026 Marks the Death of RTO: The Rise of MTCR
MTCR is rapidly becoming the gold standard for cyber threats 2026 resilience in an era where ransomware hides in backups.
5. Your Recovery Plan Is Probably Flawed—Here’s Why (Introducing MTCR)
For decades, organizations measured disaster recovery using RTO (Recovery Time Objective)—how fast you can restore systems.
But RTO has a fatal flaw: it doesn’t guarantee cleanliness.
In 2025, Kyndryl and Commvault observed that over 40% of organizations that restored from backups after a ransomware attack re-infected themselves within 72 hours—because the ransomware had already lurked in backups or recovery scripts.
This is why the industry is shifting to MTCR: Mean Time to Clean Recovery.
MTCR doesn’t just ask, “How fast can you restore?” It asks:
“How fast can you prove your environment is untainted and safe to operate?”
Achieving low MTCR requires:
- Immutable, air-gapped backups that can’t be modified by attackers
- Deception technology (e.g., fake credentials or databases) to detect residual threats post-recovery
- Forensic validation before reconnecting systems to the network
Organizations with MTCR under 4 hours in 2025 avoided secondary breaches and reduced downtime costs by up to 60%.
What you can do:
Audit your backup strategy: Can an attacker delete or encrypt your backups? If yes, you’re not ready.
Run quarterly “clean recovery” drills: Simulate a breach, restore, and validate—without assuming success.
Measure MTCR, not just RTO. It’s the only metric that reflects true resilience.
6. Web3 Isn’t Broken—But Human Behavior Is
Despite headlines about “hacked blockchains,” the vast majority of crypto losses—over 90% in 2025—stem from human error, not protocol flaws.
The $1.8 billion Mixin Network breach wasn’t a smart contract bug. It started with a SIM swap attack on an employee’s phone, which led to compromised cloud accounts, which led to stolen signing keys.
Similarly, most “wallet drainers” rely on social engineering: fake airdrop sites, malicious browser extensions, or Discord messages saying “Your NFT is ready—click to claim.”
What you can do:
Never store seed phrases digitally—not in notes, not in photos, not in password managers.
Use hardware wallets (Ledger, Trezor) for anything of value.
Never connect your wallet to unknown websites—even if they look official. Check URLs carefully.
7. The Silent Crisis: Third-Party and Cloud Risks
You can have perfect internal security—and still get breached through a vendor.
In 2025, 31% of all breaches involved a third party (IBM X-Force). Common paths:
- A marketing agency with access to your email system
- A cloud backup provider with excessive permissions. We suggest reading about sandbox for more details.
- An MSP using a single set of credentials across 200 clients
Cloud misconfigurations remain the #1 cause of data exposure. Simple mistakes—like leaving an S3 bucket public or granting *:* permissions in AWS—continue to leak terabytes of data.
What you can do:
Enforce least privilege for all third parties—no vendor should have broad access.
Use CSPM (Cloud Security Posture Management) tools like Wiz or Lacework to auto-detect risky configurations.
Require vendors to provide SBOMs and undergo annual security assessments.
8. What’s Coming in 2026—and How to Prepare
Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) Isn’t Optional Anymore
NIST has finalized its first PQC algorithms (CRYSTALS-Kyber for encryption, CRYSTALS-Dilithium for signatures). The EU’s Cyber Resilience Act now requires PQC readiness for critical products sold in Europe starting in 2026. The U.S. is moving in the same direction.
Action: Audit all systems using RSA or ECC encryption. Create a migration roadmap by Q1 2026.
AI Agents Will Be Your Biggest Blind Spot
Autonomous AI agents that book meetings, debug code, or process invoices are already in use. But they lack intent verification. If compromised, they can make legitimate-looking API calls to exfiltrate data.
Action: Treat every AI agent like a privileged user. Log its actions, limit its permissions, and require human approval for high-risk tasks.
Regulation Is Accelerating For Cyber Threats 2026
- U.S. SEC: Public companies must disclose material cyber incidents within 4 business days
- EU NIS2: Expands cyber threats 2026 obligations to cloud providers, managed services, and more
- State laws: California, New York, and Texas now require specific ransomware reporting
Action: Align your incident response plan with legal requirements—don’t wait for a breach to learn your obligations.
Final Thoughts: Defense in 2026 Is About Assumption, Not Prevention
You cannot prevent every attack. What you can do is assume compromise, limit blast radius, and recover cleanly.
Focus on:
- Governing your NHIs as rigorously as human accounts
- Validating recovery, not just restoring data
- Training leaders to recognize AI-powered social engineering
- Measuring what matters: MTCR, not just RTO
This isn’t about buying more tools. It’s about changing your mindset.
9.Frequently Asked Questions: Cyber threats 2026 & Defenses
About the Author
Joas Antonio Marquez is a former Mandiant incident responder (2015–2023) and analyst with CISA’s Cyber Defense Division. He has investigated ransomware, APT, and supply chain breaches across critical infrastructure sectors. A contributor to MITRE ATT&CK and the OWASP Agentic Top 10, he maintains open-source security repositories on GitHub and Gitee. His work focuses solely on practical defense—not tools, marketing, or offensive techniques.
Sources (2024–2025)
- CISA Alerts AA25-200A, AA25-362A
- ENISA Threat Landscape Report 2025
- IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2025
- Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2025
- Palo Alto Networks: “The 82:1 Problem: Securing Non-Human Identities” (2025)
- Armis: “Quadruple Extortion: The New Ransomware Playbook” (2025)
- Commvault & Kyndryl: “MTCR: Redefining Cyber Resilience” (2025)
- Legit Security: “Vibe Coding and Supply Chain Risk” (2025)
- Data Encoder Research blog
- OWASP Top 10 for Agentic AI Applications (2025)
- NIST Special Publication 800-208: PQC Migration Guidelines
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