2026 Threat intelligence report

The biggest trends the IBM X-Force team observed in 2025 were a surge in broad‑based exploitations of exposed systems, weaknesses in software supply chains and growing systemic dependencies across cloud and application ecosystems. Identity protection, secure configuration and visibility across applications, development pipelines and cloud environments are increasingly central to cyber resilience. As attackers continue to refine credential‑driven and supply‑chain‑focused operations, strengthening these fundamentals remains the most effective defense.