The digital world is expanding faster than defenders can keep up. Proliferating data, cloud services, connected devices, and digital identities adds exposure beyond the enterprise perimeter—where attackers are waiting. AI-driven phishing, ransomware, and data theft campaigns are growing more sophisticated, exploiting what’s already visible or exposed online.
That’s the challenge facing cybersecurity teams heading into 2026: achieving visibility at machine speed and scale. Traditional defenses weren’t built to monitor this sprawling, ever-changing footprint. Most detections still come too late—after credentials leak, sensitive data spreads, or brand trust erodes. As adversaries move faster and target more exposed digital assets, organizations need real-time event, threat and risk intelligence that detects emerging risks beyond the perimeter—before they escalate into costly, reputation-shaping incidents.
Digital Risk Defined
The exposure of an organization’s digital footprint, data, identities, and brand residing outside the enterprise perimeter, where they’re vulnerable to adversary compromise, impersonation, theft, extortion, and other forms of malicious exploitation and disruption.
No. 1: Compromised Credentials
Compromised credentials remain one of the most pervasive entry points for attackers—and one of the hardest to contain. In 2024, the Change Healthcare breach exposed how quickly weak authentication controls can cripple an enterprise. Attackers accessed a portal lacking MFA, deployed ransomware, and encrypted core systems, impacting nearly 193 million individuals and costing tens of millions in ransom and operational losses. The organization eventually admitted to paying the $22 million ransom and never recovered the stolen data. The attack affected an estimated 192.7 million individuals.
Read more: Change Healthcare Ransomware Attack Shines Light on Third-party Risk and Exposure
Today’s credentials extend far beyond usernames and passwords. API keys, tokens, and cloud access credentials are scattered across applications, repositories, and automation scripts—creating a vast attack surface for theft, reuse, or resale on the dark web. And with an estimated 15 billion credentials available for sale on the dark web today, attackers no longer need to breach networks. They simply log in.
According to security firm Check Point, there was a 160% year-over-year surge in credential exposures in 2025—with more than half of U.S. companies experiencing some form of executive identity fraud. In fact, there were more than 14,000 cases of customers’ employee credentials being exposed in data breaches in a single month.
The risk isn’t just operational—it’s systemic. In a recent attack against UK retailer Marks & Spencer, its entire online shopping platform was taken down and took months to recover, ultimately costing the company more than $400 million in lost profits. Once stolen, credentials are weaponized for account takeovers, phishing campaigns, and ransomware deployment.
As we head into 2026, AI-driven credential stuffing, social engineering bots, and synthetic identity fraud are accelerating compromise at industrial scale. For security teams, this underscores a critical truth: identity has become the new perimeter—and protecting it is now central to protecting the enterprise.
Learn More: Use Dark Web Data Sources to Protect Your Organization From Cyber Attacks
No. 2: Ransomware and Extortion
Ransomware remains the most visible and financially devastating cyber threat, and its evolution into data extortion has made it far harder to defend against. Attackers no longer just encrypt systems, they exfiltrate sensitive data first and threaten to leak it all publicly unless paid.
The Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters collective recently claimed to have stolen customer and partner data from 39 Salesforce instances from some of the largest, publicly traded companies in the world—later leaking several datasets when ransom deadlines expired.
According to recent research, the average ransom payment exceeded $1.3 million with more than half opting to pay the ransom to recover their data. Today’s ransomware groups operate like businesses—leveraging affiliate models, 24/7 support, and AI tools to accelerate reconnaissance, scale operations, and automate attack delivery. They exploit stolen credentials, leverage zero-days and malware, obtain insider information, and even target third-party suppliers to gain access and take control of the targeted organization’s systems.
Looking ahead to 2026, the line between ransomware and data extortion will continue to blur as adversaries adopt generative AI to profile victims, craft personalized ransom demands, and identify weak links in digital supply chains. For cybersecurity leaders, that means containment is no longer enough—defense must evolve toward early detection, threat disruption, and resilience by design.
No. 3: Data and IP Leakage
Data and IP leakage are rapidly emerging as some of the most pressing digital risks of 2026. As cloud adoption, SaaS sprawl, and third-party integrations expand, sensitive data and proprietary intellectual property (IP) now reside far beyond the enterprise perimeter—where visibility and control are weakest.
Cybercriminals are capitalizing through “hack-and-leak” schemes and data extortion campaigns that monetize stolen source code, personally identifiable information (PII), and trade secrets for profit and competitive gain. These campaigns have evolved from opportunistic breaches into highly organized operations. Now cybercriminals are targeting cloud repositories, collaboration platforms, and CI/CD pipelines to exfiltrate valuable data earlier in the development process and at unprecedented scale.
Campaigns like ShinyHunters’ 2025 SaaS breaches of Google and Workday highlight just how massive and damaging these leaks can be—impacting hundreds of companies simultaneously, exposing billions of records, and fueling a thriving underground market where stolen corporate data is weaponized for ransom, identity fraud, and corporate espionage.
Going into 2026, AI-driven automation will continue to lower the technical barriers further, enabling adversaries to discover, expose, and exploit enterprise data faster and more efficiently.
No. 4: Impersonation and Phishing Attacks
Impersonation and phishing attacks are evolving into precision-engineered campaigns that blur the line between deception and authenticity. Domain typosquatting, spoofed email addresses, and cloned login portals have long been standard tactics—but attackers are now leveraging generative AI to craft highly personalized and context-aware lures that are nearly impossible to distinguish from legitimate communication.
The 2024 takedown of the illicit phishing-as-a-service platform, LabHost, exposed the industrial scale of this threat, containing links to over 40,000 impersonated domains. Even more challenging, it takes an average of 11.5 days for security teams to coordinate with the appropriate registrars to deactivate the malicious sites.
Impersonation and phishing campaigns do more than compromise systems; they erode customer trust and damage brand credibility. A single impersonation incident can undermine years of reputation-building, especially when clients or partners are directly defrauded.
In 2026, AI-driven phishing kits and synthetic media will make impersonation faster, cheaper, and more convincing. Protecting the enterprise now means protecting its identity—and visibility into impersonation attempts in real time is the only way to stay ahead.
No. 5: Disinformation Campaigns
Disinformation has evolved from a reputational nuisance into a weaponized digital threat that can erode market confidence, manipulate public sentiment, and destabilize entire sectors. While the use of false narratives and manipulative messaging has existed for centuries, the proliferation of the Internet, social media platforms, algorithmic amplification, and generative AI have dramatically increased the scale, speed, and efficacy of these operations.
Adversaries run disinformation campaigns to inject false narratives into public discourse to distort perception and perform sophisticated social engineering activities. They leverage sophisticated media manipulation tools—such as fake social accounts, bots, deepfakes, cloned voices and visuals—to craft and distribute content that undermines trust in brands, institutions, and individuals. In many cases, they blend authentic and fabricated content to make the narratives more believable to amplify their reach.
Much like phishing attacks–these campaigns have existed throughout history and have been reimagined by attackers for the digital age. Typically, they utilize false narratives, manipulation, and existing social or cultural divisions to undermine an organization’s reputation or trust with the consumer.
For cybersecurity teams, the risk is double-edged. First, the organization’s brand, customers and employee trust can be compromised by narratives designed to deceive or disrupt. Second, such campaigns can be leveraged as the initial phase of a larger attack—phishing, impersonation, supply-chain disruption or industrial espionage. For example, when a Danish-Swedish dairy company trialled a methane-reducing cow feed in 2024, it quickly became the target of a social media smear campaign filled with conspiracies and false claims. The company mounted a defense, but the reputational damage was already inflicted.
The World Economic Forum estimates disinformation has caused billions of dollars in market losses and ranks it as a top global risk for 2025.
As we head into 2026, security leaders can no longer afford to treat disinformation as an isolated PR issue. We must incorporate it as a core tenet of digital risk, elevating the role of brand resilience with security teams to better monitor and mitigate related disinformation threats online.
Defending Against Digital Risk in Real Time
Every digital risk—whether compromised credentials, ransomware, data leaks, impersonation, or disinformation—represents not just a standalone threat but a potential catalyst for larger, coordinated attacks. A single incident can cascade across business units, partners, and supply chains in minutes. The faster an organization detects, validates, and acts on the initial signal, the greater its ability to contain damage, preserve trust, and sustain operations.
Dataminr Pulse for Cyber Risk equips security teams with real-time threat visibility over 1.1 million real-time public data sources—from social platforms and dark web forums to code repositories and domain registries. With Dataminr, security teams gain the earliest warnings to emerging threats, vulnerabilities, and digital exposures so you can:
- Accelerate detection and response to leaked assets. Identify exposed credentials, source code, and sensitive data the moment they surface online, assess potential impact, and initiate remediation before adversaries can exploit them.
- Preempt impersonation and phishing campaigns. Detect fraudulent domains, fake accounts, and spoofed identities in real time, enabling teams to block, remove, and neutralize threats before they reach employees or customers.
- Prioritize and mitigate targeted threats. Monitor dark web chatter and threat actor activity mentioning your organization to understand intent, assess exposure, and focus defensive resources where they matter most.
With Dataminr Pulse for Cyber Risk, security teams gain real-time visibility and actionable intelligence to stay ahead of adversaries and mitigate risk at unprecedented speed and scale.
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