Top Highlights
- Phishing drove 23% of intrusions in 2026, up from 7% the year before.
- Over 52% of intrusions involving compromised accounts led to further credential theft.
- AI is accelerating reconnaissance, social engineering and exploit development; vulnerabilities can be weaponised in under 24 hours.
Threat, techniques, and targets
– Microsoft ranked Australia 11th globally among countries whose customers faced cyber activity most often in the first half of 2026.
– Phishing rose sharply. It accounted for 23% of observed intrusions in 2026, compared with 7% a year earlier.
– Attackers use AI for reconnaissance, social engineering, malware, exploit development, and activity after a breach. Microsoft also reported real world attacks run largely by AI agents.
– Meanwhile, compromised identities remain a common entry point. More than 52% of intrusions involving compromised accounts led to further credential theft.
– Attacks increasingly cross identities, applications, cloud environments, suppliers, and critical infrastructure. AI systems that connect to enterprise data, applications, APIs, and internal tools also face security risks.
– Attackers may weaponise a vulnerability in less than 24 hours after discovery.
Impact, security implications, and remediation
– A single compromised account can lead to further credential theft. In addition, connected attacks can spread across systems and organisations, which can make activity harder to detect from one source alone.
– Microsoft recommends making phishing resistant authentication standard, including wider use of passkeys. It also advises strong identity and authorisation controls, least privilege, data protection, monitoring, testing, and secure software development.
– Security teams should use AI to help detect, investigate, and respond faster. They should also review signals across endpoints, identities, cloud systems, applications, email, and networks.
– Finally, Microsoft recommends two way information sharing between government and industry. This can help organisations connect threat indicators across environments.
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