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Five Cybersecurity Threats Security Leaders Should Prepare for in 2026

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Summary

Huntress outlines five 2026 risks—RMM abuse, AI-enabled cybercrime, social engineering, ransomware extortion, and identity attacks—and recommends layered detection, staff training, resilience planning, and faster response.

Key points

  • Huntress says abuse of remote monitoring and management tools rose roughly 277% year over year; it recommends behavior-based monitoring for persistence, unusual process chains, and lateral movement.
  • The article warns that AI can support deepfakes, adaptive malware, vulnerability discovery, and targeted phishing, and advocates combining technical controls with staff training.
  • ClickFix, fake CAPTCHA pages, smishing, and vishing can trick users into running malicious commands or giving up access; Huntress says more than half of loader activity in its telemetry is tied to such scams.
  • Ransomware groups increasingly exfiltrate data before encryption and use multiple extortion threats; Huntress estimates time-to-ransom has stretched from about 17 to 20 hours.
  • Recommended ransomware preparations include watching for lateral movement, credential abuse, and data staging, alongside offline backups, network segmentation, and tested incident response plans.
  • Identity attacks can use stolen credentials, inbox rules, rogue OAuth apps, and session tokens to bypass MFA; Huntress reports suspicious login footprints in about 37% of identity threats in its telemetry.
  • For BEC and identity misuse, the article recommends monitoring identity and email activity, verifying financial transactions, enforcing MFA, and limiting privileges.

Article Details

Topic
2026 cybersecurity threats facing security leaders, including abuse of trusted remote-management tools, AI-enabled cybercrime, social engineering and phishing, ransomware and multi-extortion, and identity attacks and business email compromise.

Vendors

HuntressHuntress data shows RMM abuse jumped roughly 277% year over year, making it one of the defining attack patterns of 2026.

Products

Google Workspacesession hijacking, rogue OAuth apps, suspicious access rules, and BEC flows in Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, with an MTTR of around 3 minutes to lock a compromised account. Managed SIEM pulls in VPN,Huntress Managed EDRThis is a problem that requires distrusting your trusted tools. Huntress Managed EDR is built to watch for behavior, including persistence mechanisms, unusual process chains, and lateral movement, even when thatManaged ITDRa user does click, Managed EDR catches footholds, loaders, and post-click persistence at the endpoint. Managed ITDR spots the downstream identity abuse, including suspicious inbox rules, rogue OAuth apps, andManaged SATsecurity awareness training has to reflect real threats, not generic phishing simulations. Huntress Managed SAT is built on actual threat intelligence pulled from millions of monitored endpoints and identities, soManaged Security Awareness TrainingOn the human side, Managed Security Awareness Training includes content specifically focused on generative AI scams, deepfakes, and AI-crafted phishing, so your employees know what these attacks actually look like, notManaged SIEMinbox rules, rogue OAuth apps, and impossible travel, that often follows a successful phish. And Managed SIEM correlates signals across VPN, firewall, and endpoint logs to surface phishing-driven lateral movementMicrosoft 365 Apps for EnterpriseThat means detecting session hijacking, rogue OAuth apps, suspicious access rules, and BEC flows in Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, with an MTTR of around 3 minutes to lock a compromised account. Managed SIEMScreenConnectRemote monitoring and management (RMM) platforms like ScreenConnect were built to make IT teams more efficient.

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