Blog

March 2026

Cyber activity in March reflects a continued shift toward more visible, coordinated, and operationally impactful threats. What stands out is not just the techniques being used, but how intentionally they are being applied - aligning with broader geopolitical tension, supply chain exposure, and business disruption.

Attackers are no longer just trying to get in. They are thinking about how their activity will be seen, felt, and amplified once they do.

What We’re Seeing This Month

Threat Activity Is Becoming More Visible

Cyber operations are increasingly designed to be noticed. In many cases, attackers are not just executing intrusions, they are shaping narratives through data exposure, public disclosures, and targeted messaging.

This creates a dual-layered impact. Organizations are dealing with both the technical incident and the external perception of it at the same time.

For security teams, this means response plans can’t stop at containment. There needs to be alignment with leadership, communications, and legal teams to manage how incidents unfold publicly, not just internally.

Identity and Access Are the New Battleground

Access has become more valuable than exploitation. Instead of forcing their way in, attackers are leveraging valid credentials, existing sessions, and trusted platforms to move quietly through environments.

This changes the nature of detection. Traditional indicators tied to malware or vulnerabilities are often absent, replaced by activity that appears legitimate on the surface.

Organizations that focus only on perimeter defense are missing where a large portion of modern threat activity is happening -  inside the environment, through identity-driven access.

Edge and Externally Exposed Systems Remain a Key Entry Point

Infrastructure at the edge continues to be one of the most consistent ways attackers gain access. Systems like SD-WAN, VPNs, and externally facing services are constantly scanned, tested, and revisited over time.

What makes this risk persistent is not just exposure, it’s drift. Configurations change, patches lag, and visibility gaps emerge as environments evolve.

Security teams need to treat these systems as living assets that require continuous validation, not static infrastructure that was secured once and forgotten.

Supply Chain and Third-Party Risk Is Expanding

Organizations are no longer operating in isolation, and attackers are taking advantage of that reality. Third-party vendors, service providers, and partner connections often introduce pathways that bypass traditional security controls.

These relationships are built on trust, but from a security perspective, that trust needs to be continuously verified.

The challenge is visibility. Many organizations have strong internal monitoring, but far less insight into how external access is being used, or misused, once it’s established.

Operational Disruption Is a Growing Objective

There is a clear shift toward targeting systems where impact extends beyond IT. Instead of focusing solely on data theft, attackers are increasingly aiming to disrupt operations, affect safety, or influence public perception.

This is especially relevant in sectors like energy, manufacturing, and critical infrastructure, where digital systems directly support physical processes.

As a result, cybersecurity is becoming inseparable from business continuity. The question is no longer just “Was data compromised?” but “What did this interrupt?”

Attackers Are Blending Into Normal Activity

One of the more challenging trends is how effectively attackers are blending into legitimate operations. By using built-in system tools and administrative functions, they can operate without triggering traditional alerts.

This makes detection less about identifying known bad activity and more about recognizing subtle deviations from normal behavior.

Organizations that understand their baseline - how systems, users, and processes typically behave - are far better positioned to catch what doesn’t belong.

What This Means for Organizations

Taken together, these trends point to a broader shift in how risk should be approached.

Security is no longer just about preventing access, it’s about understanding activity, reducing exposure, and responding quickly when something changes.

A few priorities are becoming increasingly clear:

• Visibility must extend across infrastructure, identity, and third-party access
• Speed of response is critical as attack timelines continue to shorten
• Incidents should be treated as business events, not just technical issues
• Detection strategies need to focus on behavior and context, not just alerts

Organizations that can connect these elements: people, process, and technology, will be in a much stronger position to manage both the technical and operational impact of modern threats.