M-Trends 2026 Report: Real-world investigations and actionable defense insights

A definitive look into the threats and tactics used in breaches, grounded in over 500k hours of incident investigations in 2025 by Mandiant.

Why this report is essential

In a landscape where the window to intervene has collapsed from hours to seconds, security leaders can no longer rely on reactive strategies. M-Trends 2026 provides the frontline intelligence needed to address both emerging AI-driven threats and the persistent systemic failures that still account for the vast majority of breaches. Move beyond passive defense with actionable guidance on securing unmonitored Tier-0 assets, virtualization stacks, and SaaS integrations.

Download the M-Trends 2026 Report to uncover:

• How the timeline for accelerated ransomware handoffs between cybercriminal partners has collapsed to just seconds.
• How attackers are abusing AI within compromised environments.
• Why modern extortion campaigns have shifted away from simple encryption toward aggressive “Recovery Denial” tactics.
• Why multi-year espionage intrusions are forcing organizations to drastically rethink their forensics and telemetry retention strategies.
• How threat actors target the virtualization stack to bypass guest-level defenses and embed deep persistence.
• The systematic methods attackers use to exploit edge devices and network appliances before patches are even released.
• The mechanics of SaaS integration abuse, which adversaries are leveraging for massive data theft and cross-cloud lateral movement.

As threat actors refine their techniques, Mandiant continues to offer the critical, actionable insights needed to move beyond passive defense to active resilience.

2026 M-Trends Report

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