What the Latest Breach Data Proves: Identity Is the Front Door (and How to Secure It)

Three of the most credible incident-response datasets in the industry — the Sophos Active Adversary Report 2026, the Palo Alto Unit 42 Global Incident Response Report 2026, and the Verizon 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) — all land on the same conclusion:

Most modern breaches are identity-driven, SaaS-first, and time-compressed.
Attackers aren’t “breaking in” anymore. They’re logging in, moving fast, and abusing gaps in posture, permissions, and visibility.

This isn’t a theory. It’s what incident responders are seeing every day in real environments.

Below, we break down what the data shows, and how it maps directly to the way we build Overe: Assess, Harden, Monitor, Respond.

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Assess — SSPM / Identity and Tenant Posture

What the data shows

• Sophos reports that 57.32% of root causes are identity-related, continuing a multi-year trend toward credential theft, phishing, and identity abuse as the primary entry point. (Sophos AAR 2026)
• Palo Alto Unit 42 shows 65% of initial access is identity-driven, not exploit-driven, reinforcing that attackers prefer to log in rather than break in. (Unit 42 IR 2026)
• Verizon DBIR consistently lists credential abuse and phishing among the top initial access vectors across real-world breaches. (Verizon DBIR 2025)

In other words, the front door is wide open in far too many environments, and attackers know it.

What Overe does

This is exactly the problem space Gartner describes as SSPM (SaaS Security Posture Management) + Identity Posture. Overe’s Assess pillar continuously scans Microsoft 365 and Entra to surface:

• Risky configurations and posture gaps
• Privileged and high-risk identities
• Exposure across SaaS, apps, and tenant settings

The goal is simple: find the exposures attackers actually use, before they do.

Harden — Security Configuration Management (SCM) / IAM Hardening

What the data shows

• Sophos found that in 59.46% of incidents, MFA was missing or not correctly configured, meaning over half of victims had preventable identity control failures. (Sophos AAR 2026)
• Palo Alto Unit 42 found that 99% of 680,000 cloud identities had excessive permissions, many unused for 60+ days, massively expanding blast radius and lateral movement potential. (Unit 42 IR 2026)

Even when organisations “have security controls,” they are often misconfigured, weakened over time, or simply not enforced.

What Overe does

This aligns directly with Security Configuration Management (SCM) and IAM hardening, with CIEM-like outcomes around reducing over-privilege. Overe’s Harden pillar:

• Enforces MFA and Conditional Access
• Applies policy baselines at scale
• Reduces risky access paths and over-permissioned identities
• Prevents configuration drift from re-opening old holes

The objective is clear: shrink both the attack surface and the blast radius before an attacker ever gets comfortable.

Monitor — ITDR (Identity Threat Detection & Response)

What the data shows

• Sophos reports median attacker dwell time is now ~3 days, showing how quickly incidents escalate once access is gained. (Sophos AAR 2026)
• Palo Alto Unit 42 shows 87% of intrusions span multiple attack surfaces (identity, SaaS, cloud, endpoints, network), which is exactly how attackers hide in plain sight. (Unit 42 IR 2026)
• Sophos also shows missing or insufficient telemetry doubled year-on-year, directly limiting detection and investigation. (Sophos AAR 2026)

Attacks are faster, broader, and harder to see if your visibility is fragmented.

What Overe does

This is classic ITDR territory. Overe’s Monitor pillar delivers:

• Identity-focused threat detection
• Visibility into risky access patterns, token and session abuse, and posture drift
• Correlated signals across SaaS and identity control planes
• Prioritised, security-context-aware alerts

The outcome: see real identity abuse early, not after impact.

Respond — ITDR Response + Guided Security Operations (GSO)

What the data shows

• Sophos found 88% of ransomware deployments and ~79% of data exfiltration happen outside business hours, when human response is slowest. (Sophos AAR 2026)
• Palo Alto Unit 42 shows the fastest 25% of intrusions now reach exfiltration in ~72 minutes, down from 285 minutes the year before, massively shrinking the response window. (Unit 42 IR 2026)

When attacks happen at night and move in minutes, manual playbooks are not enough.

What Overe does

Overe combines a built-in Auto Response Engine with Guided Security Operations (GSO). GSO turns detections and posture risks into clear, prioritised actions based on real security impact and tenant context, while the Auto Response Engine executes high-confidence remediations across identity and SaaS controls.

This enables:

• Faster containment of active threats
• Root-cause fixes, not just symptom treatment
• Continuous posture restoration
• Real 24/7 response readiness, not just 9–5 coverage

The Bottom Line: Outcomes Beat Acronyms

In analyst terms, Overe spans multiple categories:

• SSPM + Identity Posture (Assess)
• Security Configuration Management + IAM Hardening (Harden)
• ITDR Detection (Monitor)
• ITDR Response + Guided Security Operations (Respond)

But in practical terms, it’s not about categories or acronyms.

We built Overe with a clear goal: deliver outcomes. That means one platform focused on:

• Preventing identity-driven breaches
• Shrinking blast radius
• Detecting abuse early
• Responding fast enough to actually change the outcome

The fact that this spans so many “categories” only highlights how fragmented the market has become, and how hard it is for MSPs and IT teams to stitch together a truly holistic solution to these core problems.

Identity is the front door.
The data proves it.
The only real question is whether your security stack is built to secure it.

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Sources

• Sophos Active Adversary Report 2026
  Sophos. “2026 Active Adversary Report.”
  Link: https://www.sophos.com/en-us/blog/2026-sophos-active-adversary-report
• Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 Global Incident Response Report 2026
  Palo Alto Networks, Unit 42. “Global Incident Response Report 2026.”
  Link: https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/2026/02/unit-42-global-ir-report/
• Verizon 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR)
  Verizon. “2025 Data Breach Investigations Report.”
  Link: https://www.verizon.com/business/resources/T16f/reports/2025-dbir-data-breach-investigations-report.pdf

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