Global cybersecurity solutions provider eSentire offers their report on the threat landscape for 2026 entitled The Industrialization of Cybercrime: Identities are Under Attack. Included in the findings was a 389 percent increase in account compromise identity-based threats.
In the past year, the attempted theft of corporate account credentials, especially Microsoft 365 accounts, made up 50 percent of the attacks analyzed by eSentire's security research and elite threat hunting team, the Threat Response Unit(TRU).
Based on threat and incident data the findings highlight the dramatic rise of Phishing-as-a-Service (PhaaS) offerings as a primary attack vector. Email-initiated account compromises rose from 37 percent to 55 percent of total security incidents, with PhaaS-related threats accounting for 63 percent of all accounts compromised.
A Profitable End Game
The report reveals that threat actors are using PhaaS operations like Tycoon2FA, FlowerStorm and EvilProxy to carry out Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks. The hackers can initiate BEC actions, such as creating inbox forwarding rules in as little as 14 minutes, after they have captured a target’s corporate login credentials and session token and successfully entered the target’s IT network.
BEC attacks continue to be a top threat for companies, as evident by the billions of dollars businesses are losing annually to this threat. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported $2.8 billion in losses from BEC attacks in 2024 alone. Additional findings include:
- Email bombing combined with IT Helpdesk impersonation attacks increased 14x year over year.
- The ClickFix lure, used as an initial access vector, increased nearly 300 percent and represents over 30 percent of all malware delivery cases.
- Malware-related threats continued to be constant, making up 25 percent of the cyber cases worked by TRU. Information stealer threats were the most prominent among them, increasing 30 percent, with 14 percent more distinct stealers detected.
- The Software industry experienced the most threat cases, followed by Manufacturing, which saw a 32 percent increase.
- TRU does not see any of the top threats detailed in this report declining in 2026.
The full eSentire report is available here.
