The Industrialization of Cybercrime: Identities are Under Attack

In 2026, one reality has become undeniable: cybercrime has industrialized, and identities are under attack at an unprecedented scale. What was once a fragmented ecosystem of individual threat actors has consolidated into a sophisticated marketplace where specialized attack services can be purchased for as little as $200-300 USD per month, fundamentally altering who can attack, how quickly they can strike, and at what scale.

This means that traditional security models built around perimeter defense, next-day log reviews, and business-hours-only operations are structurally insufficient against adversaries who operate continuously with valid credentials and move from initial access to active exploitation in minutes, not days.

Since the speed of modern cyberattacks has outpaced the speed of traditional cyber defense, organizations must match the heightened rate of cyberattacks with 24/7 monitoring and AI-driven threat detection and response capabilities, or accept that they will consistently discover compromises only after significant damage has occurred.

In our new 2026 annual cyber threat report from eSentire's Threat Response Unit (TRU), we share a detailed analysis of threat data from thousands of security investigations across our global customer base throughout 2025. Key findings include:

• Account compromise surged 389% year-over-year and now represents 50% of all threats, with Phishing-as-a-Service platforms enabling exploitation within 14 minutes of credential theft.
• Valid credentials achieve an 85% intrusion ratio, allowing attackers to bypass perimeter defenses entirely and move from authentication to ransomware deployment within hours.
• Email bombing and IT impersonation attacks exploded 1,450%, achieving a 72% intrusion ratio by combining manufactured crises with Teams-based social engineering.
• Browser-based malware delivery increased nearly 300%, with ClickFix attacks representing 30% of cases by manipulating users into executing malicious commands.
• RMM tool abuse surged 143% as attackers exploit legitimate IT support tools like AnyDesk and TeamViewer for persistent access and rapid ransomware deployment.
• Information stealers increased 30% despite law enforcement disruption, feeding stolen credentials and session tokens into the Phishing-as-a-Service ecosystem.
• Ransomware operations rapidly adopted identity-based access methods, with major groups leveraging compromised MSP credentials and social engineering rather than technical exploits.

Download the full 2025 Year in Review, 2026 Threat Landscape Outlook report to get comprehensive threat actor analysis, detailed malware family profiles, industry-specific defensive strategies, and actionable recommendations for building Identity Threat Detection and Response capabilities, implementing Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM), and establishing 24/7 security operations that can detect and respond at the speed modern threats demand.