Top 10 ways to get breached in 2026

This is not the movies. Your typical breach doesn’t begin with a Hollywood-esque hacking plot. It’s a bit more dull than that: a bad config, a link that looked legit enough, or an overpermissioned account.

As we head into 2026, attackers aren’t necessarily getting more clever; they’re just more crafty. They’re faster, automated, and better at exploiting the little gaps we leave behind. These are the 10 most likely ways organizations will get breached in 2026 and what actually prevents or stops them.

1. Misconfigurations

Misconfigurations remain an easy “no-exploit” breach. A depressing amount of damage still starts with something embarrassingly simple: an incorrect policy, an inadvertently internet-exposed admin interface, or a search cluster that should have never been public in production. Misconfigurations are less about a brilliant attacker and more about one wrong change that made sensitive data accessible.

In 2026, these accidents are likely to happen even more. Environments will be more complex (multi-cloud, AI services, data meshes), multiplying the number of places you might be one Terraform apply away from exposure. The uncomfortable truth? The cloud still rewards speed, but speed produces mistakes. And with attackers continuously looking for misconfigurations, it only takes minutes of accidental exposure to lead to a breach.

To reduce your risk, bake guardrails into automated workflows to put a hard stop on the misconfigs by… you guessed it, using AI. Enforce policy-as-code everywhere so every change follows your security requirements, and use chain-of-command approvals for high-impact changes. Block public exposure by default and continuously scan for drift.

2. Social engineering

It used to be so easy to spot a spear phishing email or get an attacker to trip over their words. AI has given attackers more control and finesse over their social engineering campaigns and they’ve used it to scale. The campaigns are better quality and there are far more of them.

In 2026, social engineering won’t be a stolen password, or someone accidently clicking on a malware link or downloading a malicious document. With highly personalized and tailored lures, it'll be more like: The user granted a session token or OAuth token that gave the attacker access to a broad set of systems or data.

You can train employees to identify these modern threats by writing, video, or speech, but you’ll need to do more than just that. Use phishing-resistant MFA like FIDO2 and security keys for admins, tighten OAuth app scopes and content requirements, and alert on irregular token use like a new device, location, or API pattern.

3. Non-human identities

We were already aware that an identity isn’t just a person, but 2025 made it increasingly clear that the number of identities we’re dealing with is growing almost exponentially. Tokens, service accounts, CI/CD credentials, API keys, and app-to-app accesses are keeping our modern systems moving. They haven’t been monitored with the same rigor as human accounts, and attackers love that.

In 2026, the identity that gets you pwned probably isn’t a person (unless they were phished.) AI agents and automation mean more machine identities created and more scope creep when we “just give the agent access for it to work.” These forgotten credentials and wide open permissions will function as permanent backdoors.

To reduce risk, inventory identities (especially machine identities), rotate credentials and add expirations, use short-lived tokens and eliminate long-lived keys as possible, and continuously look for unused accounts, tokens, or excessive privilege.  

4. Supply chain risks

Supply chain attacks are a serious force multiplier — nab one org and hundreds of others may fall with it. This was a repeating horror story in 2025. Supply chain attacks went mainstream (again), but their impact was faster and wider. Thousands of organizations were impacted by flaws in individual packages, because modern build processes are often able to talk to many different services and require credential access. This interconnectedness and complexity is why the Shai-Hulud worm was so successful

Supply chain attacks will persist in 2026, but beyond libraries and API vendors, expect to see AI model hubs, prompt libraries, and plugins hit the headlines too. Vendor risk will continue to be a struggle as regulatory bodies push for transparency and your organization is stuck relying on and trusting the unseen security practices of someone else. Breach notifications will say, “Our environment didn't hold the flaw, our security caught it; it was a vendor in our dependency graph that leaked your data.” Because of interconnectivity, these attacks are very lucrative and likely.

Therefore, require SBOMs (and AIBOMs) where possible, verify dependencies and pin trusted ones, use signed artifacts, isolate build systems, continuously monitor for irregular package behavior, and have a process for killing, containing, and rolling back compromised dependencies.

5. AI and LLM attack surface

2025 reporting made two things obvious: AI adoption really is real, and the threats we expected against AI are getting crisper and clearer. Researchers have proven prompt injection and data exfiltration are possible; they’re in OWASP’s GenAI guidance, and we’re seeing proven reporting of threats using these methods.

For 2026, this data access abuse will continue to gain footing. We’ll see impact on vector stores, retrieval layers, plugin permissions, and agents connected to internal systems. The challenge we’ll face is differentiating these dangerous actions from legitimate API traffic.

Treat AI apps as privileged systems to minimize threat risk — sandbox tools, minimize plugin permissions, partition data based on sensitivity, use allowlists for actions, continuously log and monitor tool calls, and implement an approval chain-of-command for high-impact changes and operations.

6. Adversary-in-the-middle

The classic man-in-the-middle attack isn’t dead — he just came back in new clothes. Without needing to crack MFA, attackers are combining traditional phishing techniques with proxying the login flow. The victim enters credentials and completes MFA on what looks like the right website, and the attacker captures and can use the session cookie or token.

In 2026, AI will help these attacks scale. In addition, impersonation will be more believable. AI-generated “support” interactions will be expected popups, and attackers will capitalize on these token interceptions.

Again, using phishing-resistant authentication like FIDO2 will help reduce the risk of these threats. You can also implement location conditions for access, shorten session lifetimes, bind sessions to devices where possible, and alert on new or irregular token patterns.

7. Sprawl

In 2025, attackers didn’t need bespoke malware for a payday. They capitalized on dark corners and exposed secrets at scale. One compromised workflow or package update, and suddenly thousands of repos (and their secrets) were up for grabs. Secrets and shadow sprawl aren’t dangerous because of one big failure; it’s death by a thousand smaller poor decisions.

In 2026, Git, training data, prompt logs, a single container, and debugging details will lead to attacker ROI. With automated discovery and quick validation, an attacker can monetize access to secrets you didn’t even know existed. Your shadow IT (and shadow AI and shadow SaaS) that is not inventoried will lead to damage.

Therefore, deploy automated secret scanners in repos and pipelines, auto-block commits with credentials, use a centralized secrets manager, and establish a process for checking and securing SaaS and tool adoption.

8. Denial of service

Multiple times in 2025 we witnessed (and experienced) DDoS pain. There were attacks reaching incomprehensible numbers, like tens of Tbps, and massive spikes in volume in short bursts, forcing many organizations and service providers to stop working normally. This includes ransomware attacks, which act as a denial of service for every user of the compromised company.

These attacks will persist in 2026 not only to take down a network or supply chain, but also to distract defenders, force poor security decisions, and add more leverage to extortion attempts. It’s like the fire alarm getting pulled while someone robs the store. Automated load balancing allows survival in some cases. Redundancy and resiliency are the keys to survival.  

To reduce this risk, build for resilience and design for failover. Implement rate limiting and bot protections, and maintain a rehearsed playbook for degraded business operations.

9. DNS

2025 brought attention back to DNS cache poisoning via vulnerabilities, and renewed discussions of how forged responses can redirect users to malicious infrastructure without them even realizing it.

With third-party integrations, SaaS dependencies, and automation piling up, implicit “trust in DNS” without verifying endpoints will result in more DNS spoofing and cache poisoning in 2026.

To reduce this risk, implement resolver validation, restrict who can change DNS records and monitor for unexpected changes, and enforce HTTPS with certificate validation so critical services can’t be impersonated by DNS tricks.

10. Zero-days and exploits

2025 reinforced a brutal lesson: The time between disclosure and active exploitation is shrinking. With AI tools at their fingertips, it’s faster and easier for attackers to build and test a working exploit.

In 2026, remember to treat a vulnerability disclosure that affects your environment as the starting gun, not a nice-to-know update to add to a to-do list, because the attackers start immediately.

Prioritize the security of internet-facing systems to minimize the blast radius of a zero-day attack. Maintain an up-to-date asset inventory and emergency remediation playbooks, and monitor for actively exploited vulnerabilities so critical fixes can be prioritized.

Wrap up

None of these breaches are unique, and that’s the point. In 2026, breaches will still spur from speed, identities, and unverified trust. The good news? These are problems we already know how to reduce. Security that operates at cloud speed has to be identity-aware, contextual, continuous, and runtime-focused. Let’s get to it.

See how Sysdig helps teams reduce blast radius, detect faster, and stop attacks before they reach impact.