Cybersecurity risks organizations need to address this year
As organizations navigate a new year, they face a fundamental truth: traditional perimeter-based security has failed. The modern enterprise isn’t defined by its devices and users but by its digital assets — the crown jewels that power operations and drive value. Yet most security approaches remain stuck in an outdated paradigm, focusing on protecting devices and user accounts while overlooking the dynamic web of service accounts, APIs and machine identities that actually access and manage these critical assets. In this AI-accelerated landscape, this disconnect between security strategy and reality creates dangerous blind spots. Organizations that don’t pivot to an asset-centric security model risk more than exposure — they’re inviting catastrophic breaches.
The scale of this challenge is staggering: for every human user in an organization, 40 non-human identities interact with critical assets. These service accounts, APIs and tokens go beyond supporting operations — they are the primary means to access and manage an organization’s most valuable assets. As the world progresses toward artificial general intelligence (AGI), this ratio will only grow more extreme, with AGI systems spawning thousands of autonomous processes, each requiring asset access permissions. But 44% of IT professionals still rely on manual logging to see these machine identities. This blind spot leaves critical assets vulnerable to machine-speed attacks — a malicious actor can activate a dormant service account, execute privileged commands against an organization’s most sensitive systems, and vanish within a minute without triggering alerts.
Recent assessments reveal the depth of this challenge. Organizations routinely find their attack surface is larger than estimated, with some uncovering unchanged service accounts for decades. Alarmingly, 76% of IT professionals acknowledge that at least 15% of their service accounts have direct access to their most sensitive systems and data. The risk of a catastrophic breach is higher than ever.
As organizations move deeper into the year, they must embrace three shifts in their security posture to match the evolving threat landscape.
First, implement continuous observation of system access patterns. Traditional periodic scanning of users and devices falls short when dynamic, ever-changing machine identities are using vital resources. Only behavior-based analysis focused on these essential systems can detect anomalies as they occur, giving enterprises insight into which components are connecting to what resources and how these patterns evolve over time. For example, when privileges to high-value systems are elevated at 2 a.m. and then lowered, organizations need immediate awareness — attackers will exploit these privileges and cover their tracks before conventional tools even notice.
Real-time visibility must be paired with actionable treatment plans. When vulnerabilities are discovered, organizations need pre-defined playbooks for different scenarios. For example, a developer creating thousands of unauthorized service accounts requires a different response than addressing a decades-old dormant account. These treatment plans should consider the business impact, technical dependencies and operational constraints to ensure remediation doesn’t disrupt critical services.
Second, adopt a unified approach to identity security. The regulatory landscape is evolving to treat all authenticating human and machine entities under a single framework. This shift mirrors transformations in other industries: just as automotive safety standards mandated seatbelts, regulators are now mandating comprehensive protection for all entities. Organizations must get ahead of this curve, applying the same rigor to managing service accounts as human users.
This regulatory shift isn’t happening in isolation. From PCI to HIPAA to DORA regulations in Europe, regulators increasingly focus on non-human identity management. Organizations that proactively align their identity security programs with these emerging requirements will be better positioned as regulations evolve. This means documenting service account lifecycles, implementing robust monitoring controls, and maintaining clear audit trails of access patterns and privilege changes.
Third, elevate protection from a technical control to a strategic imperative. In today’s landscape, where adversaries log in rather than hack in, safeguarding vital enterprise resources requires a fundamental shift in thinking. This becomes even more crucial as the world approaches AGI. When systems achieve human-level reasoning capabilities, malicious actors won’t just exploit existing weaknesses — they’ll identify novel paths to most valuable systems that current models haven’t even contemplated. A single compromised machine identity could give an AGI system the foothold it needs to traverse complex system relationships with unprecedented speed and sophistication. Businesses must move beyond simple inventory tracking to understanding how automated processes interact with essential infrastructure across their environment. They need to map these connection paths and understand their linked exposures — a seemingly isolated service account might provide an indirect route to sensitive data through a chain of connected systems. This comprehensive insight must extend across cloud and on-premise environments, where intersecting patterns create dangerous blind spots.
Any meaningful defense starts with understanding the full scope of identity vulnerabilities across an enterprise. Organizations must move beyond traditional security approaches to embrace comprehensive identity security strategies that address both human and machine identities in this AI-accelerated world.
The battlefield has shifted from the perimeter to the identity layer, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. Recent breaches at major technology companies demonstrate how a single compromised service account can lead to devastating data losses and reputational damage. Adversaries are already inside enterprise networks, exploiting today’s vulnerabilities with tomorrow’s tools. The choice is clear: proactive defense or inevitable compromise. Ignoring these risks won’t make them disappear—but understanding them is the first step toward meaningful protection.
