Cloud and SaaS risks rise in 2026 as trust and outages collide
Experts have predicted a continued rise in cloud-native intrusions, with them being used as footholds to pivot into on-prem environments.
Published on 8th January 2026
Cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) security leaders are heading into 2026 with a blunt warning about attackers and outages converging in cloud ecosystems.
Experts predict a continued rise in cloud-native intrusions, with ransomware groups targeting platforms like Microsoft 365 directly and using cloud footholds to pivot into on-prem environments.
At the same time, many security professionals expect third-party SaaS supply chains to become the primary entry point for breaches, as threat actors exploit the sprawling web of integrations and dependencies that most organisations struggle to inventory.
"SaaS supply chains become the new soft target"
If I’m an attacker, I go for what’s easy and pays off big — in 2026, that will be SaaS. Everyone’s living in the cloud and connected through third-party integrations. An attacker now just needs to hit one small vendor that’s connected to a thousand other environments to create a massive return on investment at a relatively low risk.
Supply-chain-style attacks like Salesforce will become more common in 2026, especially because many SaaS providers still treat security as a premium feature. You shouldn’t have to pay extra for MFA or audit logs, but a lot of companies do. That’s creating weak spots everywhere.
Until vendors start making core security features standard, the customers will keep paying the price when those integrations get breached. The ecosystem’s too big now for security to be an optional add-on.
Mike Britton, CIO at Abnormal Security
"Cloud-based cyberattacks will surge"
As Microsoft has indicated in their own reports, we will continue to see a trending increase of attackers moving towards cloud attacks — both as an initial access point to then move laterally into on-premise environments. Look for ransomware actors to directly attack the cloud, with attacks such as ransomware and data exfiltration against Microsoft services like SharePoint and OneDrive. Expect threat actors to also to then move laterally into cloud SaaS platforms.
This won’t necessarily displace “traditional attacks,” but being opportunistic, attackers are realising the potential ease of cloud attacks without some of the more traditional barriers like firewalls being inhibitors.
Eric Woodruff, Chief Identity Architect at Semperis
"2025 has proven that even the largest and most sophisticated cloud platforms are vulnerable"
This year alone, outages rippled across the services that power our daily lives — impacting OpenAI, Snapchat, Canva, Venmo, Fortnite, Starbucks, Atlassian, Palo Alto Networks, Cloudflare, and so many others. Billions of dollars were lost not because technology failed — but because single-cloud dependence has become a single point of failure.
The causes vary — DNS misconfigurations, automation bugs, network failures — but the result is identical: disruption at global scale without warning. Today’s architectures are still built on the assumption that hyperscalers will always stay online. They won’t. And resilience can’t be a box checked after deployment.
Being “multi-cloud” isn’t about paying multiple bills. It’s about intentional design — ensuring applications, data, identity controls, networking, and security can operate across environments without heavy rework. Kubernetes solved part of the puzzle, but portability must extend far beyond containers.
In 2026 companies will need to treat resilience as a first-class requirement. They will build systems that can adapt in real time, shift workloads seamlessly, and maintain continuity no matter which provider is experiencing an outage. The pattern of cloud failures will no longer be theoretical — it’s here. The future demands resilience by design.
Harshit Omar, CTO and co-founder of FluidCloud
"Third-party SaaS supply chains will become the primary attack point"
The interconnected world of SaaS applications will emerge as the most significant vulnerability for enterprises in 2026. As companies continue moving away from on-premise infrastructure to cloud-based solutions, threat actors are shifting their focus from traditional infrastructure to third-party and even fourth-party supplier risks.
The days of isolated legacy systems are ending, and with them, the old playbook for enterprise security. What makes this particularly concerning now is that adversaries are leveraging AI to accelerate their ability to identify and exploit vulnerabilities across these complex supplier networks — turning what were once time-consuming surveillance efforts into automated processes.
CISOs must prioritize speed in securing their supplier ecosystem. The challenge isn’t just identifying which applications are in use across departments — it’s understanding them quickly enough to secure them before adversaries exploit the gaps. Start by getting the foundational security posture right for each application, rather than attempting comprehensive security programs that take months or quarters to implement.
The key is velocity: secure the primary tools first, then move systematically through the supplier list.
Jan Bee, CISO at TeamViewer
"The growing monoculture of the internet presents a significant risk"
The widespread use of the same cloud providers (like AWS), CDNs (like Cloudflare), and productivity suites (like Google or Microsoft Office) means that a failure in one service can affect millions of users, reducing the internet’s resilience. This monoculture makes hacking more profitable because even a small gain per person, when scaled across millions of users on a single platform, results in large earnings for criminals. Historically, using heterogeneous networks (Sun Microsystems, Linux, Windows servers) made systems less appealing targets by increasing the cost for attackers.
Because the digital ecosystem nowadays is largely monocultural, everyone becomes a target. Online, there is no such thing as being uninteresting. Any small piece of data, even something as simple as DNS records, can be sold, aggregated, and monetised. Simply existing online makes you a target.
Adrianus Warmenhoven, a cybersecurity expert at NordVPN
"Hybrid environments will grow faster than anyone expected"
After years of cloud-first narratives, companies are re-evaluating what belongs where. Political instability, rising sovereignty requirements, and cost pressures are pushing critical workloads back on-premise. Servers, storage systems, and licensed software are seeing a resurgence because organisations want balance, not absolutism. This shift exposes the growing skills gap. Demand for deep technical expertise in networking, Linux, and systems engineering is accelerating while talent inflow is shrinking. By 2026, this shortage will influence everything from innovation speed to resilience planning.
Jakob Østergaard, Chief Technology Officer at Keepit
"Shrinking certificate lifespans will lead to an ongoing game of whack-a-mole for security teams"
The shortening of TLS certificate lifespans will trigger a wave of crippling, ongoing machine identity-based outages. While the intent of this change by Google, Microsoft and Apple is to improve security, the new reality will become a continuous, painful exercise in whack-a-mole for security teams who will regularly need to scramble to put out fires caused by manual certificate management.
Starting in March 2026, when certificate validity is reduced from 398 days to 200 days, we’ll see a cascading set of events where forgotten or mismanaged certificates expire, causing critical systems to go offline.
A digital certificate is a machine’s identity. When it expires, the machines can no longer communicate, creating a fundamental breakdown of trust that will cripple everything from baggage handling systems at airports to bus schedules and ATMs.
What makes this so much more impactful than a single software outage is that it’s not limited to one vendor or one piece of software. It’s a problem for every business and government worldwide, and organisations that still rely on spreadsheets and manual tracking will be caught completely off guard.
This looming digital tsunami is not a question of “if” but “when,” and its far-reaching, long-tail impact is set to hit every business and government globally in 2026 and beyond.
Kevin Bocek, SVP of innovation at CyberArk
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Ahmad Juliyanto via Vecteezy