For years, organisations have fortified their perimeter: firewalls, endpoint detection, and advanced monitoring. Yet breaches continue to rise. Why? Because attackers no longer need to break in. They log in.

Modern breaches increasingly begin with valid credentials. These logins look legitimate. They pass the perimeter. But once inside, attackers move fast, often reaching critical systems before detection even begins.

Account Compromise: The New #1 Threat

eSentire’s 2026 Threat Landscape Outlook reveals a 389% year-over-year surge in account compromise, now comprising 50% of all threats.

Phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) makes credential theft easy and fast. Attackers often gain access in under 15 minutes, with an 85% success rate once credentials are in hand. The result: security controls are bypassed, and ransomware deployment is measured in hours, not days.

Speed Is the Real Risk

Credential-based attacks mimic legitimate activity. This stealth, combined with speed, limits the effectiveness of traditional detection and response. While many organisations operate on incident response timelines of hours or days, attackers act in minutes.

The gap between attacker speed and organisational response is where risk lives.

Key Questions for CISOs in 2026

Business leaders must reassess long-held assumptions:

• Are identity controls effective under real attack conditions?
• How quickly is suspicious activity detected and escalated?
• Do user privileges match actual job roles?
• Are trusted accounts ever actively tested or challenged?

Cybersecurity strategy must align with operational reality, not just policy.

Why Validation Beats Assumption

Defending against identity-driven attacks isn’t about more tools, it’s about testing. Continuous validation through penetration testing and adversary simulations exposes how attackers exploit credentials post-authentication.

At Cyber Node, we test the paths attackers actually take, probing access layers, privilege escalation routes, and detection blind spots. The result is actionable intelligence that helps leadership prioritise mitigation where it matters most.

From Controls to Confidence

Credential misuse is today’s most dependable attack method. It bypasses the perimeter and weaponises trust. The critical question for leaders:

How does our environment perform when access is already compromised?

Cyber Node helps answer that, through real-world validation that transforms assumptions into clarity.

Ready to test how exposed your identity layer really is? Reach out at sales@cybernode.au or visit cybernode.au.