It’s officially 2026 and it’s the season of reinvention, new goals and #NewYearNewMe posts on social media. For MSPs though, it’s a time to refocus our efforts on security and risk management for our clients. The threat landscape has evolved rapidly, and the tools and tactics that worked last year may not be enough to protect against today’s attacks.
With that in mind, here are the top five cybersecurity trends and considerations that MSPs must focus on in 2026 to stay ahead of emerging threats and deliver the protection clients expect.
1. AI and agentic AI: It’s here. Embrace it.
AI and agentic AI are now embedded across SIEM, EDR and identity tools, and customers expect AI-assisted detection and response as table stakes rather than a “nice to have.” At the same time, giving AI the ability to trigger actions (agentic AI) creates new attack surfaces if oversight, human-driven decision making and permissions are not tightly scoped.
How MSPs should respond
Start with education and use-case design for your internal team, focusing on concrete problems such as:
- Alert triage
- Email classification
- Ticket summarization
- Identity anomaly detection.
Map those solutions to clear SKUs (for example, “AI-assisted MDR” or “AI-enhanced ITDR”) so clients understand they are buying outcomes, not technology experiments.
Next, inventory which log sources, identity events and ticket data AI systems will see, and align data handling with your existing compliance model and retention policies. Many organizations underestimate the sensitivity of SIEM and identity logs; treating these as regulated data reduces surprises around privacy and contractual obligations.
From there, you can begin building agentic workflows where AI proposes actions in your RMM, ITSM and SOAR platforms, but humans approve anything high-risk. Over time, as confidence grows, some actions, like low-risk enrichment or ticket creation, can be automated, yielding measurable improvements in mean time to detect and respond.
Throughout, track ROI in terms of reduced analyst fatigue, faster response and better signal-to-noise, while also watching for misclassifications, hallucinations and blind spots in identity-focused detections. Done well, this becomes a margin-protecting differentiator rather than a cost center.
2. Vendor risk management: Beyond SOC reports
Vendor risk is no longer just a compliance checkbox. Regulators, insurers and customers ask pointed questions about how you vet, monitor and contractually govern your technology partners. Supply-chain style compromises have made it clear that one weak SaaS or security vendor can undermine an otherwise solid MSP stack.
MSPs now carry reputational and legal exposure for the vendors they select and manage on behalf of clients, making vendor risk a strategic function rather than paperwork.
Building a practical vendor risk plan
A major pitfall is overreliance on SOC reports, which runs the risk of only covering a subset of systems and providing limited insight into incident response maturity, secure development practices and real-world testing. Treat SOC reports as one data point rather than a proxy for security, and fill gaps with questionnaires, targeted technical questions and ongoing monitoring.
A practical vendor risk plan for an MSP starts with classification:
- Group vendors by data sensitivity and privilege into tiers that drive how much scrutiny is required
- High-impact vendors should provide not only independent attestations, but also documentation around MFA, logging, encryption, incident handling and vulnerability management.
- Build a cadence to review critical vendors annually or after a major incident
- Ensure contracts codify expectations around incident notification, data handling and minimum-security controls
Continuous monitoring matters as much as initial due diligence, especially in a landscape where breaches and product changes happen frequently.
You can then showcase this to clients as part of your efforts to strengthen the supply chain you helped create. This drives intrinsic value to what you do for them.
3. ClickFix and context phishing: The new social engineering
ClickFix and other context-aware phishing techniques exploit users’ desire to “fix” security problems, piggybacking on browser updates, CAPTCHAs and Cloudflare-style checks rather than sending obviously malicious attachments. Traditional awareness training, focused mainly on bad links and fake invoices, is not enough to stop these more adaptive social engineering campaigns.
How ClickFix works
ClickFix and similar techniques show how attackers have shifted from “trick users into opening a file” to “trick users into running commands to fix a problem.” Campaigns often abuse legitimate services or compromised sites to present users with familiar-looking CAPTCHAs, update prompts and security checks.
In recent cases, victims were guided through fake troubleshooting flows that ended with copying and pasting a command into a command prompt or PowerShell, giving attackers the ability to execute arbitrary code under the user’s context. Because this execution is user-initiated and often occurs after a chain of redirects involving trusted brands, traditional filters and signatures are less effective.
Mitigating ClickFix attacks
Mitigation starts with privilege management:
- Limit local admin rights
- Enforce just-in-time elevation
- Restrict the use of powerful scripting tools on endpoints
Application control and hardened PowerShell policies reduce the chance that a single misguided “fix” turns into a full compromise.
Browser and OS hardening should also be a baseline, leveraging built-in URL reputation checks, safe browsing features and advanced anti-phishing engines. Combined with secure browser or SASE-style tools, this gives you visibility into web activity that would otherwise be opaque.
Finally, user awareness programs must be updated to showcase ClickFix-style scenarios, emphasizing that unsolicited prompts instructing users to run commands, install updates outside normal channels or bypass browser warnings are high-risk. Simulating these techniques in your phishing tests helps you measure resilience and adjust training content accordingly.
4. Identity-first security and ITDR
Identity-based attacks now dominate modern cybercrime, with valid credentials used in a large share of intrusions. This reality has pushed identity threat detection and response (ITDR) to the forefront as a distinct control layer alongside EDR and SIEM.
Data over the past two years shows that identity-based attacks are at the heart of many intrusions. At the same time, data breach reports reveal continued growth in identity exposure, underscoring how many credential sets and personal data records are already in circulation.
What is ITDR?
Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) has emerged to close gaps left by traditional IAM and SIEM, focusing on monitoring identity systems for anomalies, risky sign-ins and privilege changes. For MSPs, managed ITDR services that integrate with Entra ID, Okta and similar SSO platforms are becoming as important as managed EDR.
5. Infostealers: The front of the kill chain
Infostealers like Lumma increasingly sit at the front of the kill chain, silently exfiltrating credentials, cookies and browser data that later enable business email compromise, fraud and ransomware. Even as specific families are disrupted, new variants such as Vidar 2.0 rapidly fill the gap with more efficient and evasive stealing capabilities.
Why infostealers matter
Infostealers are a critical part of the identity attack story, functioning as the collection arm that feeds identity-driven attacks. Lumma Stealer, for example, has been heavily used to harvest credentials, cookies and browser data, often with advanced evasion and fingerprinting to avoid detection.
Even as law enforcement and community pressure disrupt portions of Lumma’s infrastructure, successor families like Vidar 2.0 step in with faster and more efficient data theft capabilities. For MSPs, it is safer to assume that any high-value environment has already had some credentials exposed and build detection and response around that assumption.
Defending against infostealers
Mitigations must prioritize monitoring and protecting data flows rather than just blocking binaries, which is where Data Loss Prevention (DLP) can help detect and stop unauthorized exfiltration. MDR or SOCasaService offerings should explicitly focus on behaviors typical of infostealers such as:
- Suspicious browser activity
- Credential dumping tools
- Anomalous outbound connections.
Cloud monitoring platforms such as Defender for Cloud, paired with secure browser or SASE-like tools, add visibility into SaaS and cloud workloads where stolen credentials are most often abused. Combined with ITDR, this gives MSPs an integrated way to watch for impossible travel, atypical API usage, and other signs of identity misuse.
The MSPs that will stand out in 2026
For 2026, the MSPs that stand out will be those that can tell a coherent, identity-first story: AI-assisted detection, vendor-aware risk management, ClickFix-ready defenses, and a clear strategy for infostealers and credential-driven threats.
Security is no longer about checking boxes or deploying the latest tool. It’s about building a cohesive strategy around the latest cybersecurity trends that addresses the threats your clients face today and prepares them for what’s coming next. The MSPs that take this approach will not only protect their clients better, they’ll also differentiate themselves in a crowded market.
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