The modern cybersecurity battlefield has a new frontline that is not defined by firewalls or network perimeters but by the countless digital identities that power every facet of the modern enterprise. As organizations have dissolved their traditional boundaries in favor of cloud-based and remote work environments, attackers have deftly shifted their focus from breaking down walls to simply walking through the front door using stolen or compromised credentials. This fundamental change in tactics has made identity the premier threat vector for organizations worldwide. A comprehensive new report reveals that this already critical risk is being dangerously amplified by the rapid and often unsecured integration of Artificial Intelligence, creating a vast, unmanaged attack surface and leaving the majority of businesses alarmingly exposed to sophisticated breaches that begin not with a bang but with a legitimate login.
The New Norm: Breaches Begin with Identity
The data paints an unambiguous picture: identity-based attacks are no longer an emerging threat but have firmly established themselves as the dominant security challenge facing organizations. Malicious actors are increasingly bypassing complex network defenses to target and exploit the credentials of employees, third-party vendors, and a rapidly growing army of non-human, machine-based entities. For a staggering 76% of organizations, these identity-related incidents were responsible for up to half of all security breaches over the past year. This statistic alone signals a seismic shift in the threat landscape, indicating that for the vast majority of businesses, the compromise of a legitimate identity is a more probable path to a breach than a traditional network intrusion. This method is effective because it allows attackers to operate under the guise of a trusted user, making their malicious activities difficult to distinguish from normal business operations until it is far too late.
The severity of this trend is even more concerning when examining the hardest-hit organizations. Nearly a quarter of all businesses reported that identity-based attacks constituted more than half of their total security failures, confirming that for a significant portion of the corporate world, identity compromise is now the primary driver of data breaches. This reality forces a complete reevaluation of security strategies, moving the focus from perimeter defense to a zero-trust model centered on verifying every identity and access request. The attack surface is no longer just the corporate network; it is every single human and non-human identity with access to company resources, a surface that is expanding and becoming more complex by the day. This requires a security posture that is not only defensive but also deeply analytical, capable of understanding the context and behavior of every identity within the digital ecosystem to spot the subtle signs of a takeover.
Systemic Weakness: Blind Spots and Slow Reactions
This tactical pivot by adversaries has exposed critical and systemic weaknesses within corporate defenses, primarily a profound and dangerous lack of visibility. The research reveals that fewer than half of organizations, a mere 46%, possess a complete and comprehensive view of all the human and non-human identities operating across their digital environments. This majority blind spot is often a direct result of fragmented security tooling, with many companies using between three and ten separate, disconnected tools just to monitor identity. This patchwork approach creates dangerous gaps, particularly in complex Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) environments where most critical applications and data now reside. Without a unified view, security teams are forced into a reactive posture, unable to see the full picture of who has access to what. As a consequence, a concerning 57% of organizations only detect identity-based threats after an attack is already in progress, rendering proactive prevention nearly impossible.
The consequences of this poor visibility are further compounded by alarmingly slow incident response times. When a breach is finally detected, time is of the essence, yet the vast majority of security teams are unable to act with the necessary speed. Only 29% of organizations can determine the “blast radius”—the full scope of systems and data an attacker can access—within minutes of discovering a compromise. For the remaining 71%, this critical assessment takes hours or even days to complete. This prolonged delay provides attackers with a wide-open window of opportunity to move laterally across the network, escalate their privileges by finding more powerful credentials, and exfiltrate vast amounts of sensitive data before they can be effectively contained. This operational lag is a direct outcome of the visibility gap; without a clear, real-time understanding of identity relationships and permissions, security teams are left piecing together clues while the attacker solidifies their foothold within the compromised environment.
The AI Risk Multiplier
Artificial Intelligence is now pouring fuel on the identity security fire, creating a new and largely ungoverned frontier of risk that most organizations are unprepared to manage. An incredible 95% of organizations now report that their AI systems can autonomously create or modify digital identities without any direct human oversight, flooding their environments with a massive volume of new, often untracked credentials. While this capability drives automation and efficiency, it also exponentially expands the corporate attack surface. Each new AI-generated identity represents another potential entry point for attackers if not properly secured, governed, and monitored. These non-human identities often operate with broad permissions and outside the scope of traditional security controls that were designed for human users, making them an attractive and often invisible target for malicious actors seeking to infiltrate corporate systems undetected.
The danger posed by these autonomous AI agents is magnified by the level of access they are granted.Fixed version:
The modern cybersecurity battlefield has a new frontline that is not defined by firewalls or network perimeters but by the countless digital identities that power every facet of the modern enterprise. As organizations have dissolved their traditional boundaries in favor of cloud-based and remote work environments, attackers have deftly shifted their focus from breaking down walls to simply walking through the front door using stolen or compromised credentials. This fundamental change in tactics has made identity the premier threat vector for organizations worldwide. A comprehensive new report reveals that this already critical risk is being dangerously amplified by the rapid and often unsecured integration of Artificial Intelligence, creating a vast, unmanaged attack surface and leaving the majority of businesses alarmingly exposed to sophisticated breaches that begin not with a bang but with a legitimate login.
The New Norm: Breaches Begin with Identity
The data paints an unambiguous picture: identity-based attacks are no longer an emerging threat but have firmly established themselves as the dominant security challenge facing organizations. Malicious actors are increasingly bypassing complex network defenses to target and exploit the credentials of employees, third-party vendors, and a rapidly growing army of non-human, machine-based entities. For a staggering 76% of organizations, these identity-related incidents were responsible for up to half of all security breaches over the past year. This statistic alone signals a seismic shift in the threat landscape, indicating that for the vast majority of businesses, the compromise of a legitimate identity is a more probable path to a breach than a traditional network intrusion. This method is effective because it allows attackers to operate under the guise of a trusted user, making their malicious activities difficult to distinguish from normal business operations until it is far too late.
The severity of this trend is even more concerning when examining the hardest-hit organizations. Nearly a quarter of all businesses reported that identity-based attacks constituted more than half of their total security failures, confirming that for a significant portion of the corporate world, identity compromise is now the primary driver of data breaches. This reality forces a complete reevaluation of security strategies, moving the focus from perimeter defense to a zero-trust model centered on verifying every identity and access request. The attack surface is no longer just the corporate network; it is every single human and non-human identity with access to company resources, a surface that is expanding and becoming more complex by the day. This requires a security posture that is not only defensive but also deeply analytical, capable of understanding the context and behavior of every identity within the digital ecosystem to spot the subtle signs of a takeover.
Systemic Weakness: Blind Spots and Slow Reactions
This tactical pivot by adversaries has exposed critical and systemic weaknesses within corporate defenses, primarily a profound and dangerous lack of visibility. The research reveals that fewer than half of organizations, a mere 46%, possess a complete and comprehensive view of all the human and non-human identities operating across their digital environments. This majority blind spot is often a direct result of fragmented security tooling, with many companies using between three and ten separate, disconnected tools just to monitor identity. This patchwork approach creates dangerous gaps, particularly in complex Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) environments where most critical applications and data now reside. Without a unified view, security teams are forced into a reactive posture, unable to see the full picture of who has access to what. As a consequence, a concerning 57% of organizations only detect identity-based threats after an attack is already in progress, rendering proactive prevention nearly impossible.
The consequences of this poor visibility are further compounded by alarmingly slow incident response times. When a breach is finally detected, time is of the essence, yet the vast majority of security teams are unable to act with the necessary speed. Only 29% of organizations can determine the “blast radius”—the full scope of systems and data an attacker can access—within minutes of discovering a compromise. For the remaining 71%, this critical assessment takes hours or even days to complete. This prolonged delay provides attackers with a wide-open window of opportunity to move laterally across the network, escalate their privileges by finding more powerful credentials, and exfiltrate vast amounts of sensitive data before they can be effectively contained. This operational lag is a direct outcome of the visibility gap; without a clear, real-time understanding of identity relationships and permissions, security teams are left piecing together clues while the attacker solidifies their foothold within the compromised environment.
The AI Risk Multiplier
Artificial Intelligence is now pouring fuel on the identity security fire, creating a new and largely ungoverned frontier of risk that most organizations are unprepared to manage. An incredible 95% of organizations now report that their AI systems can autonomously create or modify digital identities without any direct human oversight, flooding their environments with a massive volume of new, often untracked credentials. While this capability drives automation and efficiency, it also exponentially expands the corporate attack surface. Each new AI-generated identity represents another potential entry point for attackers if not properly secured, governed, and monitored. These non-human identities often operate with broad permissions and outside the scope of traditional security controls that were designed for human users, making them an attractive and often invisible target for malicious actors seeking to infiltrate corporate systems undetected.
The danger posed by these autonomous AI agents is magnified by the level of access they are granted. Nearly four in ten companies allow their AI systems to access between 26% and 50% of their most sensitive data, including customer records, proprietary financial information, and invaluable trade secrets. While an overwhelming 95% of business leaders expressed confidence in their ability to track these non-human identities, industry experts have labeled this a likely “false confidence.” The reality is that while an organization may have a record that an AI agent exists, it typically lacks the crucial runtime intelligence to understand what that agent is actually doing, what permissions it truly holds and uses, and how it is interacting with the critical company data it can access. This dangerous chasm between perceived security and actual risk creates a fertile ground for sophisticated attacks that leverage the trusted status of an AI agent to carry out malicious activities from deep inside the organization.
The Path Forward: Unifying Visibility
Despite the grim findings and the escalating complexity of the threat landscape, the research identified a clear and widely endorsed path toward a more secure future. There was strong consensus among security professionals on the need for strategic change and significant investment. An overwhelming majority of organizations—nearly nine out of ten—had planned to increase their investment in identity security, acknowledging that their current capabilities were insufficient. Critically, these organizations were no longer looking to solve the problem by adding more disparate tools to their already bloated tech stacks. When asked what would most improve their security posture, they overwhelmingly prioritized real-time threat detection and, most importantly, unified cross-platform visibility. The consensus was that a single, consolidated view of all identities—human, vendor, non-human, and AI—across all platforms was the most effective strategy for closing security gaps, accelerating threat detection, and enabling a rapid, decisive response. This unified approach was seen as the essential strategy for regaining control over the expanding and increasingly complex identity fabric of the modern enterprise.
