As the new year rings in, a prominent shift is brewing in India’s cyber threat landscape. Seqrite, the enterprise security arm of Quick Heal Technologies Limited, a global provider of cybersecurity solutions, has identified several key trends that will shape the face of cybersecurity in 2026. The India Cyber Threat Report 2026, prepared by researchers at Seqrite Labs, India’s largest malware analysis facility, reveals that password-based systems will be rendered obsolete against sophisticated AI-assisted attacks as identity becomes the new perimeter.
Seqrite’s latest threat report also forecasts that 2026 will see adversaries increasingly weaponize OAuth tokens for cloud identity compromise. This will enable seamless lateral movement across hybrid environments, without triggering traditional malware alerts. Seqrite’s telemetry across 8 million endpoints documented OAuth abuse as a dominant vector in cloud intrusions, where attackers exploit misconfigured identity providers to impersonate legitimate users and access sensitive resources undetected. Behaviour-based detections blocked over 34 million anomalous activities, many tied to identity misuse rather than executable threats. These findings prove that perimeter defenses must evolve from network boundaries to continuous identity verification
The India Cyber Threat Report 2026 also exposes how 2025’s ransomware campaigns by groups like Qilin, Akira, and Cl0p shifted from mass encryption to identity-centric extortion, using stolen credentials and OAuth token manipulation to infiltrate cloud consoles and API endpoints. In India’s hybrid environments, on-premises systems accounted for 91% of detections due to legacy exposure, while cloud contributed 9% but faced targeted identity threats like configuration drift and unmanaged access. Seqrite Labs observed that cloud intrusions often bypassed endpoint visibility entirely, relying instead on OAuth abuse and API exploitation that traditional password policies failed to contain. This identity perimeter collapse enables attackers to maintain persistence for weeks, exfiltrating data through legitimate channels while legitimate users remain unaware of compromise.
As the year 2026 unfolds, cognitive threats are expected to accelerate identity attacks through AI-generated deepfake authentication bypasses and autonomous credential stuffing at enterprise scale. Researchers at Seqrite Labs predict that generative AI will create hyper-realistic impersonations capable of defeating multi-factor authentication (MFA) based on biometrics or behavioral patterns, while zero-trust gaps in OAuth flows become primary entry points for cognitive intrusions. Indian enterprises in education, healthcare, and manufacturing, which already account for 47% of 2025 detections, face existential risk as identity becomes the weakest link in expanding cloud-native surfaces.
Seqrite recommends zero-trust identity management as an imperative to robust cyberdefense. Researchers at Seqrite Labs also suggest adopting continuous authentication, behavioral biometrics, and AI-powered identity correlation to replace static password paradigms. Enterprises must implement just-in-time access, ephemeral credentials, and anomaly detection across identity fabrics to counter OAuth weaponization and token theft. The report’s analysis of 265.52 million detections confirms that signature-based defenses alone cannot address identity-driven threats, demanding integrated platforms combining predictive intelligence with autonomous response capabilities.
As India’s digital footprint expands, Seqrite calls for regulatory alignment on identity standards and cross-industry collaboration to establish national identity assurance frameworks. The cybersecurity firm has launched Seqrite Threat Intelligence and enhanced enterprise offerings with zero-trust identity modules powered by patented GoDeep.AI technology. Organizations ignoring the identity perimeter shift risk catastrophic breaches in 2026’s cognitive threat era, where human trust becomes the ultimate exploit vector and resilient identity architectures determine operational survival.
