ACCORDING to Cloudforce One, the 2026 threat landscape is defined by a move from brute-force entry to high-trust exploitation, with eight MOE-driven trends shaping security in 2026.
AI is automating high-velocity attacker operations, enabling real-time mapping, exploit development and deepfake creation; state-sponsored pre-positioning by Salt Typhoon and Linen Typhoon is targeting North American infrastructure for long-term leverage; and over-privileged SaaS integrations are expanding the blast radius of breaches, as seen in the GRUB1‑Salesloft case.
Adversaries are weaponising trusted cloud tooling to mask activity, with threats exploiting Google Calendar, Dropbox and GitHub to blend into enterprise traffic, while deepfake personas are embedding operatives within Western payrolls for espionage and illicit revenue.
The report also highlights token theft via infostealers like LummaC2 to bypass MFA, and phishing-as-a-service with high-reputation domains producing sophisticated campaigns; hyper-volumetric DDoS attacks, including those fed by the Aisuru botnet, continue to exhaust infrastructure capacity. Cloudforce One’s methodology includes finding a 9.4 CVSS critical flaw (CVE-2026-22813) in a self‑analysis, DMARC gaps in nearly 46% of analysed emails, and a 31.4 Tbps DDoS baseline alongside rising bot-driven login activity.