January 29, 2026
Every January, organizations roll out security initiatives, refresh slide decks, and announce new tools. This happens every year because breaches continue to happen every year. More often than not through the same well-known traps.
The uncomfortable truth is that most cyber incidents aren’t caused by a lack of technology or understanding of said technology. They are caused by inconsistent or poor habits.
As we head further into 2026, the most effective cybersecurity resolution isn’t by signing up for or buying another platform, it is institutionalizing repeatable behaviors that reduce risks every day.
Below are five cyber habits that can combat how attackers operate today.
Habit 1: Threat Identity as the Primary Security Perimeter
The network perimeter is gone. The device perimeter is shrinking. Making ‘Identity’ what attackers target first. Credential theft.
Credential theft through infostealers, phishing kits, MFA fatigue, and token hijacking remains the fastest path to initial access. If identity controls fail, everything else becomes irrelevant. A safer 2026 begins by treating authentication as critical infrastructure rather than a convenience feature.
That shift means moving beyond basic MFA (multifactor authentication) toward phishing-resistant options such as FIDO2 keys, WebAuthn, and passkeys, particularly for privileged and external-facing accounts. It requires eliminating shared credentials and reducing service account sprawl that quietly accumulates over time. OAuth grants and long-lived tokens must be reviewed regularly, as attackers increasingly rely on them for persistence that survives passwords resets. Most importantly, authentication monitoring needs a focus on behavioral anomalies rather than simple success failure.
Attackers don’t need to waste their time with malware if they can use your credentials to log in. Make authentication harder to abuse than to bypass.
Habit 2: Assume Logs are Evidence, Not Telemetry
Most organizations have gotten the memo to collect logs, however, few treat them like the forensic evidence they are.
When an incident occurs, defenders often discover too late that critical data has already been overwritten, was never retained, or lacks the context required to reconstruct attacker activity. These gaps don’t just slow investigations, they make accurate timelines impossible.
A mature security habit is logging with intent. That means deliberately retaining the artifacts you may need, because if you can’t quickly answer What happened first?, attackers already have the advantage.
At a minimum, that includes:
- Identity and authentication logs retained long enough to reconstruct timelines
- Endpoint telemetry with process linage and command execution context
- DNS, proxy, and network logs that reveal how systems communicate
- Cloud control plane and audit logs that are enabled to centrally stored
- Normalized timestamps and identity fields across all sources
Without this foundation, even well-detected incidents turn into partial stories rather than defensible investigations.
Habit 3: Patch What Attackers Actually Exploit
Not all vulnerabilities are equal, and attackers know it… even if organizations don’t.
While many organizations still prioritize patching based on severity scores alone, real-world threat actors focus on systems that provide leverage and persistence. Edge devices, exposed management interfaces, and internet-facing services continue to dominate initial access pathways, particularly when public proof-of-concept exploits accelerated attacker timelines.
A safter approach isn’t patching everything immediately but patching the right things first. Perimeter and identity infrastructure should be treated as endgame assets, with exploit availability and evidence of active abuse prioritized over theoretical risk. In some cases, the most effective remediation is not another compensating control, but the removal of legacy services altogether. Attackers move faster than patch cycles, and defensive prioritization must reflect that reality.
Habit 4: Reduce Signal-to-Noise Before an Incident
Burned-out analysts miss early warning signs just as overloaded detection systems bury real threats.
Many security programs accumulate alerts and tools without revisiting whether those signals still provide value. Over time, if everything becomes high priority then genuine threats blend into the background noise.
Operational discipline is a security habit, in its own right. Alerts should map cleanly to response actions, detections should be tuned to the environment they protect, and enrichment should be automated, so analysts spend their time making decisions rather than gathering context. Security teams rarely fail because they lack data, they fail because they cannot prioritize data effectively under pressure.
Habit 5: Practice the Boring Parts of Incident Response
Many incident response plans look excellent on paper but collapse like a house of cards under real-world pressure.
Teams often understand what they are supposed to do, but they don’t always understand who is supposed to do it, how to quickly make decisions, or what authority is required to act. Organizations that recover faster teat response as a practiced skill, not a “theoretical” exercise.
That practice includes realistic tabletop exercises, rehearsing difficult trade-offs between containment and continuity, and pre-approving actions that would otherwise stall response efforts while leadership is looped in. Clear escalation paths outside normal business hours matter just as much as technical controls. When something goes wrong, muscle memory matters more than documentation.
The Takeaway
Cybersecurity resolutions in 2026 won’t be met by throwing around buzzwords or buying new tools. Resolutions will be met by organizations that turn good security theory into daily practices.
Identity-first controls, intentional logging, threat-informed patching, operational clarity, and practiced responses aren’t flashy. However, they are effective.
Make these five habits your new year’s resolution and keep them long after January fades into a distant memory.
