AI Phishing Is No. 1 With A Bullet For Cyberattacker
Dark Reading, Friday, April 24th, 2026
In the past six months, companies have seen a significant influx of AI-powered phishing, as cyberattackers progress from small campaigns to 1-to-1 personalized attacks.
Powered by attackers' AI usage, phishing attacks have surged back to become the top vector for initial access in incident-response engagements during the first quarter of the year, overtaking exploitation of external vulnerabilities as the top method of compromise.
That's according to Cisco Talos' "IR Trends Q1 2026" report, published this week, which found that, overall, more than a third of compromises (35%) the team investigated last quarter started as successful phishing attacks. Attackers used valid accounts in 24% of cases and exploited public-facing applications in another 18%, according to data from the report.