2026 New Year’s Resolutions for Cybercriminals

(Spoiler: Your Business Is on Their List)

Every year, organizations set intentions for improvement. Unbeknownst to many business leaders, cybercriminals do the same — but their goals are malicious and strategic. As attack methods evolve, adversaries set yearly objectives focused on maximizing profit with minimal effort. In 2026, small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) remain top targets because they often lack dedicated security resources and defensive maturity.

From Securafy’s operational perspective, attackers’ “resolutions” reflect predictable patterns we see across incident response cases: phish more convincingly, impersonate trusted contacts, exploit human behavior, and focus on softer targets. Understanding these trends helps you disrupt them before they become real problems.

Resolution #1: “I Will Send Phishing Emails That Don’t Look Fake Anymore”

Phishing is no longer limited to obvious misspellings and generic greetings. Today’s attackers use social engineering powered by automation and artificial intelligence to craft highly contextualized messages that mimic real conversations and vendors.

Modern phishing campaigns:

• Use language and tone consistent with your industry

• Reference actual vendors or partners

• Time messages around business workflows and calendar events

This sophistication increases success rates and makes detection based on “it looks fake” ineffective.

Phishing remains one of the most common initial access vectors in cyberattacks. According to the 2025 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, a significant portion of breaches involve social engineering or credential theft, with phishing playing a central role (Verizon DBIR SMB Snapshot).

Your counter-move: Establish verification protocols for any email involving money, access, or credentials. Equip your team with real scenario-based training, and deploy advanced filtering solutions that detect domain impersonation and contextual anomalies.

Resolution #2: “I Will Impersonate Your Vendors or Your Leadership”

Business Email Compromise (BEC) continues to be one of the most expensive forms of cybercrime because it exploits trust, not technology. Attackers impersonate vendors, executives, or internal staff to request urgent payments or sensitive information.

These scams often involve:

• Vendor payment changes

• CEO impersonations directed at finance staff

• Text-based requests appearing to be authoritative

Deepfake scams — including voice cloning — have matured to the point where audio impersonations of executives are plausible. Attackers can extract voice samples from public recordings, voicemail greetings, or conference videos, then use them to pressure employees into immediate action.

BEC is pervasive and growing because human trust is easier to exploit than technical defenses. According to the FBI’s IC3 2023 report, BEC cost U.S. businesses billions of dollars annually — and SMBs are disproportionately affected because they have fewer mitigations in place.

Your counter-move: Implement strict verification for any request involving financial changes or sensitive transactions. Use established contact channels (not those provided in the message) and enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) on all financial and admin accounts.

Resolution #3: “I Will Target Small Businesses Harder Than Ever”

Historically, attackers prioritized large enterprises with bigger payouts. As security requirements increased for those organizations — including enhanced monitoring, segmentation, and compliance mandates — attackers shifted focus.

Today’s strategy is decentralized and volume-based: instead of one high-value breach, criminals mount many lower-value attacks against smaller targets with weaker defenses. Each successful compromise yields profit with lower effort and risk.

This shift is visible in breach data: small organizations are frequently targeted precisely because they lack robust security operations. The Verizon DBIR consistently shows high percentages of breaches affecting small and medium-sized enterprises.

Small businesses are not victimized due to carelessness — they are targeted because they typically lack dedicated security staffing, proactive controls, and continuous monitoring.

Your counter-move: Adopt basic defensive controls — MFA, up-to-date patching, tested backups, and staff education — that raise the barrier to entry. Most opportunistic attackers will look for easier targets with less resistance.

Resolution #4: “I Will Exploit New Employee Season and Tax Chaos”

Attackers time campaigns to coincide with organizational cycles. January and early spring bring two predictable windows:

1. New hires and onboarding — New team members are unfamiliar with internal policies and eager to help, making them more susceptible to social engineering.

2. Tax season — Payroll and HR processes ramp up, with increased requests for W-2s, employee data, and financial communication.

HR and finance departments become high-value targets during these periods. Fake requests for W-2s or payroll changes not only lead to data theft but also enable tax-related identity fraud at scale.

In real cases, attackers have successfully harvested employee tax information with targeted phishing that mimicked internal HR communications. Once that data is obtained, fraudulent tax filings and payroll fraud follow quickly.

Your counter-move: Incorporate security training into onboarding so all new hires understand scam patterns immediately. Create written policies for sensitive requests (e.g., “W-2s are not shared via email”), and reinforce them with periodic testing.

Preventable Beats Recoverable — Every Time

Cybersecurity outcomes fall into two categories: prevention or reaction. Prevention means investing in controls that reduce likelihood and impact. Reaction means dealing with the consequences after compromise.

The cost difference is stark:

• Recovery from ransomware alone can exceed six figures when accounting for remediation, operational disruption, and business loss.

• Data breaches involving sensitive employee information trigger regulatory reporting and remediation costs.

• Business Email Compromise results in direct financial loss and business interruption.

These outcomes are far more expensive — financially and operationally — than implementing preventive security controls.

How to Ruin Cybercriminals’ 2026 Plans

Attackers prefer easy targets, environments with unmanaged configurations, weak authentication, untrained staff, and limited monitoring. A strategic security posture shifts the cost to them, making your business less attractive compared with competitors.

A strong defensive foundation includes:

• Continuous monitoring to detect suspicious activity

• Tight access controls limiting credential misuse

• Security awareness training grounded in real-world scenarios

• Verification policies for financial and administrative changes

• Regularly tested backups that enable recovery without capitulation

• Timely patching to minimize exploitable weaknesses

This approach is fire prevention, not firefighting — and it aligns precisely with the threat trends adversaries are prioritizing in 2026.

Take Your Business Off the Target List

Cybercriminals are already planning their next moves. They anticipate that many organizations will enter the new year unprepared, understaffed, and with outdated assumptions about risk.

Disrupt their expectations.
Move toward preventive security with clarity, prioritized actions, and expert support.

Book Your New Year Security Reality Check

In just 15 minutes, we’ll assess:

• Where you are exposed

• What matters most

• How to raise your defensive posture without overwhelming your team

No scare tactics. No jargon. Just actionable insight.

The best New Year’s resolution is making sure your business isn’t on someone else’s list of goals to achieve.