The thought of a successful cyberattack is a sobering one for any business, but even more alarming are advanced persistent threats. Through these sophisticated attacks, a bad actor infiltrates a network and is able to linger for an extended period of time, undetected, accessing sensitive data, disrupting operations or even conducting ongoing surveillance.
Carefully planned and often tailored to specific industries and technologies, APTs are evolving and growing in number, with cloud migration, remote workplaces and increased reliance on third-party vendors expanding the attack surface. Below, members of Forbes Technology Council detail emerging APT tactics digital organizations must be ready for and how to prepare.
1. Browser-Based Threats
Browsers have emerged as a significant threat vector. The significant majority of our work time is spent within browsers. As the use of SaaS applications continues to grow, the number of locations where sensitive data is stored expands, making it more challenging to secure data and leaving IT and security teams struggling to keep up. Our inability to mitigate browser-based threats poses critical risk for our organizations. - John Carse, SquareX
2. EDR Bypass Tools
Threat actors are weaponizing EDR bypass tools (or “EDR killers”) to launch their attacks, as seen in recent attempts by RansomHub. Threats that evade perimeter controls, however, must still cross the network—which can’t be tampered with. Have a layered defense that includes network visibility to identify unusual patterns that could indicate malicious behaviors so attackers have nowhere to hide. - Rob Greer, ExtraHop
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3. AI-Supported Attacks
AI supports every phase of an attack, including command-and-control (C2) beaconing. If your security mostly relies on machine learning systems based on rules and known indicators, you’re exposed. Most enterprises should expect their counterparties to be repeatedly hacked—until we all embrace adaptive deep learning as a defense. - Evan Powell, Deep Tempo
4. Deepfake-Driven Phishing
APT groups will weaponize deepfake-driven phishing even further. AI-generated voices and videos will impersonate executives, bypassing traditional identity verification and social engineering defenses. Organizations must implement multifactor biometric authentication, behavioral analytics and AI-driven anomaly detection that can flag even the most subtle inconsistencies. - Aditya Patel, Amazon Web Services (AWS)
5. Weaponized Cloud Collaboration Tools
Cloud collaboration tools are increasingly being weaponized. Attackers “live off the land” using trusted platforms like Microsoft 365 to evade detection. To combat this, organizations should implement strong multifactor authentication and behavioral analytics for cloud environments and train employees to recognize suspicious activity in the tools they rely on for daily collaboration. - Gergo Vari, Lensa, Inc.
6. Social Engineering Attacks
Advances in generative AI have become sophisticated, making social engineering attacks more convincing and challenging to detect. Identity-driven security, such as phishing-resistant authentication and verification, plays a crucial role in mitigating social engineering attacks by focusing on verifying and validating the identities of users and entities involved in digital interactions. - Venkat Viswanathan, Okta
7. Targeting Of Disaster Recovery Systems
APTs are increasingly targeting backup and disaster recovery systems to sabotage recovery efforts. Organizations must implement immutable backups, enforce zero-trust access, regularly test recovery plans and use AI-driven threat detection to ensure cyber resilience. - Aliasgar Dohadwala, Visiontech Systems International LLC
8. Infostealer Malware
APT groups are increasingly leveraging infostealer malware to harvest credentials and session cookies, allowing them to bypass multifactor authentication and maintain stealthy access. To defend against this, organizations must monitor for stolen credentials, detect and invalidate compromised sessions, and enforce adaptive authentication to prevent attackers from exploiting legitimate user identities. - Damon Fleury, SpyCloud
9. Supply Chain Attacks
A rising APT tactic is supply chain attacks, where hackers exploit third-party vendors and software dependencies to breach networks. To counter this, organizations must conduct strict vendor assessments, enforce zero-trust security, implement continuous monitoring and strengthen incident response to safeguard critical systems and data. - Sanjoy Sarkar, First Citizens Bank
10. Malware Embedded In Open-Source AI Models
While open-source AI models are a goldmine for software developers, they are equally attractive to cybercriminals for embedding malware. Organizations need to be able to discover which models are being used within their applications, and how they’re being used, to screen them for security risks and enforce policies over which models can and cannot be used. - Varun Badhwar, Endor Labs
11. Adaptive APTs
Prepare for AI-driven APTs that autonomously adapt to security defenses. These attacks learn from detection attempts and modify their techniques to remain hidden. Prepare by implementing AI-based defense systems, conducting adversarial simulations, developing response playbooks, embracing zero-trust architecture and investing in threat intelligence for early warnings of new attack methods. - Priya Mohan, KPMG
12. Adversarial AI Attacks
An emerging APT tactic is adversarial AI attacks, where threat actors manipulate machine learning models to evade detection or generate false insights. Organizations should prepare by securing AI training data, implementing robust anomaly detection and continuously stress-testing models against adversarial inputs. Strengthening AI governance and investing in explainable AI will enhance resilience. - Sai Vishnu Vardhan Machapatri, Vernus Technologies
13. Zero-Click Exploits
Attackers are deploying zero-click exploits—which require no user interaction—to infiltrate mobile devices, Internet of Things systems and critical infrastructure. Enterprises need continuous endpoint monitoring, hardware-level security enforcement and AI-driven anomaly detection for connected devices. - Vamsi Krishna Dhakshinadhi, GrabAgile Inc.
14. Targeting Of Shadow IT
An emerging APT tactic involves targeting unmanaged digital assets (that is, shadow IT) and poisoning AI training data to manipulate outcomes. Organizations should conduct regular audits to identify and secure shadow IT, enforce strict governance over digital tools, validate AI data pipelines and implement anomaly detection to ensure data integrity before model training. - Mark Mahle, NetActuate, Inc.
15. Adversary-In-The-Middle Attacks
A new APT tactic to watch for is adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) attacks, where threat actors intercept and manipulate real-time communications to bypass authentication and hijack sessions. To prepare, organizations should implement phishing-resistant multifactor authentication, monitor session integrity and deploy AI-driven anomaly detection to flag unauthorized access attempts before they escalate. - Roman Vinogradov, Improvado
16. Data Governance Gap Attacks
APTs will increasingly target data governance gaps rather than technical systems. Organizations should prepare by establishing comprehensive data inventories and clear data lineage. When you know what data you have, who can access it and how it flows through systems, you eliminate the “dark corners” where threats hide. - Nick Hart, Data Foundation
17. AI Poisoning
Organizations must prepare for “AI poisoning,” where attackers manipulate machine learning models by injecting corrupted data into training sets. This can lead to biased and incorrect results, eventually distorting fraud detection and security defenses. Organizations must implement robust data validation pipelines and regularly and proactively audit AI models for anomalies. - Harini Shankar
18. Cloud-Native Attack Chains
Cloud-native attack chains are a rising advanced persistent threat trend. These use cloud services for stealthy, complex attacks that evade traditional defenses. Organizations must implement cloud workload protection (CWP), continuous API monitoring and SIEM that correlates cloud-native logs. Microsegmentation and least-privilege access are also vital to limit lateral movement. - Pradeep Kumar Muthukamatchi, Microsoft
19. Data Exfiltration
Attackers with long-term footholds in networks performing data exfiltration are a major concern. To combat this, businesses should implement zero-trust architectures to limit lateral movement and use next-generation firewalls that analyze traffic patterns to new or untrusted locations. - Imran Aftab, 10Pearls
