Topic starter
08/07/2026 7:08 pm
TL;DR: Cyber resilience in 2026 depends on shifting from project-based security to continuous privileged access control, as ransomware incidents rose more than 53% year over year, unmanaged devices carried corporate logins in 46% of cases, and leaked secrets took a median 94 days to fix, according to Fudo Security. The governance gap is not awareness but persistence: dormant accounts, unmanaged credentials, and broad access outlast the controls meant to contain them.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Fudo Security: “Fudo Security”.
By the numbers:
- 2025 saw a 53% year-over-year increase in ransomware victims to over 7,960 on double-extortion leak sites.
- Educational institutions faced an average of 4,352 attacks per organisation weekly.
- Verizon found that 46% of compromised systems containing corporate logins were unmanaged devices.
Key questions
A: Privileged access breaks down when it is handled as a short-term implementation rather than a living control.
Q: Why do leaked secrets and dormant accounts increase ransomware risk?
A: They preserve valid access after the organisation has stopped paying attention to them.
Q: How can security teams tell whether privileged access reviews are actually working?
A: They are working when every privileged entitlement is inventoried, every decision is traceable, and revoked access is removed from all connected systems without delay.
Practitioner guidance
- Map privileged access to every dormant account Identify accounts that no longer have an active business owner, a current use case, or a recorded review outcome.
- Shorten the exposure window for leaked secrets Treat exposed API keys, tokens, and other secrets as a revocation event, not a ticket backlog item.
- Centralise third-party privileged access oversight Require one control point for contractor and supplier sessions so you can see who accessed what, from where, and under which entitlement.
Bottom line: The article frames cyber resilience as a privileged access problem as much as a detection or recovery problem.
Explore further
View Full Forum → | NHI Foundation Course → | Our Services → | Read the full analysis →
08/07/2026 7:32 pm
Continuous privileged access control is now a resilience discipline, not an access administration task. The article is right to connect PAM with cyber resilience because access governance now sits on the same critical path as detection and recovery. If privileged access remains broad, stale, or invisible, resilience fails before response even starts. Practitioners need to treat privileged access as an operational continuity control, not a back-office entitlement process.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How can organisations secure third-party privileged access in hybrid environments?
A: Require suppliers to use time-limited access, monitor every session, and restrict them to the minimum systems needed for support. Do not treat vendor access as a permanent exception. It should be governed like any other high-risk identity, with ownership, approvals, and offboarding built in.
👉 Read our full editorial: Cyber resilience in 2026 depends on continuous privileged access control