Every year, the Microsoft Digital Defense Report gives us an opportunity to step back from individual threats and look broadly at what Microsoft’s security and threat intelligence teams are seeing. Today, we released the 2026 Report, which reflects a security environment that continues to grow more interconnected.
We see that across the report. Threat activity can span infrastructure, identities, applications, cloud environments, and software supply chains. AI systems and agents increasingly interact with data, tools, and business systems. And activity that looks incomplete in one part of an environment can become clearer when separate signals are considered together. That makes the connections across an environment increasingly relevant to how we understand both cyberthreats and defense.
The pace of change also matters. AI models are becoming more capable, automation is expanding, and new connections are forming across the systems organizations rely on. These developments can change the speed and scale of security activity even as the underlying security fundamentals remain familiar.
Several findings in this year’s report illustrate that.
AI in the threat landscape
Threat actors are incorporating AI into reconnaissance, social engineering, malware and exploit development, and post-compromise activity. For now, much of their use remains focused on specific parts of existing attack workflows, even as more advanced applications of AI continue to develop.