The Trends That Matter
Five shifts reshaping the buyer conversation.
Synthesized across the five reports. Each includes what the research says and what it should change about your security spending.
Trend 01 · The Vector Flip
Exploits just beat credentials as the #1 way in.
For 18 straight years, stolen credentials were the top initial access vector in the Verizon DBIR. In 2026 that changed. Vulnerability exploitation now starts 31% of breaches, and stolen credentials dropped to 13%. IBM X-Force independently confirms the shift, calling exploitation the leading cause of attacks at 40% of incidents. Attackers are pivoting from phishing your people to finding and weaponizing unpatched flaws in your externally-facing systems.
What it means
Exposure and vulnerability management is no longer table stakes. It's a top-priority spend category. Attack surface management, autonomous validation, and continuous vulnerability scoring all move up the roadmap. If your VM program is still quarterly, you're operating a generation behind.
Trend 02 · AI's Dual Threat
AI accelerated the attackers 89 percent in one year.
Adversaries are using AI to scale reconnaissance, personalize phishing, generate malware, and evade detection. CrowdStrike observed a 89% jump in AI-enabled adversary activity year-over-year. Legitimate AI systems inside enterprises are also becoming targets: over 90 organizations had prompt injection attacks in 2025, and IBM found 20% of breached orgs experienced shadow AI incidents, adding $670K to average breach cost.
What it means
AI governance is a security problem, not just a legal one. Agentic AI security, AI-aware data protection, shadow AI discovery, and prompt injection defenses become new line items. If your team still calls this "an emerging issue," you're already behind the curve.
Trend 03 · The Malware-Free Attack
82 percent of detections had no malware at all.
CrowdStrike reports that 82% of 2025 detections were malware-free, meaning attackers accomplished their objectives without deploying tools that traditional endpoint tools were designed to catch. They log in with valid credentials, abuse SaaS applications, pivot through identity, and exfiltrate through trusted channels. Mandiant confirms: modern intrusions "blend into normal activity while compressing defenders' time to respond."
What it means
Endpoint-only security is a losing bet. Identity threat detection, SaaS security, behavior analytics, and cross-domain XDR become the frontline. This is why the pure-play EDR market is consolidating into XDR and MDR platforms. Buy accordingly.
Trend 04 · The Industrialized Attack Economy
Access-to-ransom handoffs are measured in seconds now.
Mandiant found the shortest observed handoff from initial access broker to secondary actor was 22 seconds. Attackers no longer sell access on underground markets; they hand it off in real time to partner crews who monetize it immediately. Active ransomware groups surged 49% year-over-year (IBM X-Force). Meanwhile ransomware operators are increasingly targeting your backups and recovery infrastructure first, before encryption begins.
What it means
Response speed matters more than ever. SOAR, breach and attack simulation, backup and data resilience with immutable snapshots, and 24x7 managed detection all move up the priority list. Your "low-priority alert" today is a full compromise by lunch.
Trend 05 · The Cost Bifurcation
Global breach costs dropped. US breach costs hit a record.
IBM's 2026 Cost of a Data Breach shows the global average declined 9% to $4.44M, the first drop in five years, driven by faster containment. But the US average hit a record $10.22M, up 9%, driven by state-by-state notification laws, class-action exposure, and healthcare/financial sector concentration. The gap between prepared and unprepared organizations widened dramatically.
What it means
Breach economics are geopolitical and sector-specific. A US enterprise now needs meaningfully more security investment than global peers to reach the same risk-adjusted position. This changes the ROI math on almost every security purchase. Ask us for a program benchmark against your peers.