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For infrastructure leaders, cyber resilience means more than preventing an intrusion: it means knowing which essential services depend on which systems and suppliers, preparing to operate through disruption, and proving that services can be restored. ENISA’s 2026 Threat Landscape, dated 22 September 2026, assesses incidents observed in the EU during 2025. Its findings point to ransomware, geopolitically driven activity against essential entities, and malicious use of emerging AI as pressures to plan for—not as a forecast of every organization’s risk.
What ENISA’s 2026 threat assessment says
ENISA’s 2026 assessment covers events observed from 1 January through 31 December 2025; it is an EU-focused review of that period, not a global incident census or a forecast. ENISA says ransomware remains the most short-term impactful incident type, geopolitical developments continue to influence activity affecting the EU—including hacktivist-led distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) campaigns against essential entities—and emerging AI models are expected to be increasingly used in malicious operations. These are ENISA’s assessments, not a prediction that every organization will experience each threat. ENISA Threat Landscape
The assessment also indicates that essential services are prominent in the incidents it analyzed. The figures below retain their EU and NIS2 dataset context; they should not be read as estimates of any sector’s probability of attack.
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| Measure in ENISA’s 2026 assessment | Reported figure and scope |
|---|---|
| Targeted organizations | 73% of targeted organizations in ENISA’s EU dataset were entities classified as essential or important under NIS2. |
| Public administration | 32% of cases in ENISA’s 2026 EU incident dataset. |
| Business services | 8% of cases in ENISA’s 2026 EU incident dataset. |
| Transport | 8% of cases in ENISA’s 2026 EU incident dataset. |
| Manufacturing | 7% of cases in ENISA’s 2026 EU incident dataset. |
| Finance and banking | 6% of cases in ENISA’s 2026 EU incident dataset. |
The sector shares describe the cases in ENISA’s dataset, not the distribution of all cyber incidents. They help explain why a resilience program should start from the services an organization must sustain, rather than from a generic list of threats.
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What the observed intrusion paths mean for infrastructure
ENISA’s 2025 report analyzes 4,875 incidents observed from 1 July 2024 through 30 June 2025. In that dataset, phishing accounted for about 60% of observed intrusion vectors and vulnerability exploitation for 21.3%. ENISA compiled the data from open sources and anonymized information shared by member states and partners; it cautions that reporting delays, incomplete information, and classification limits mean the dataset is not a complete picture. These figures are not global attack rates and do not predict an individual organization’s likelihood of compromise. ENISA Threat Landscape 2025
For operators, the practical implication is to connect common entry paths to service consequences. Phishing supports prioritizing identity protection, staff reporting routes, and response to compromised accounts. Exploitation supports accurate asset discovery and a vulnerability process that prioritizes systems by exposure, exploitability, and the service they support. These are implementation priorities drawn from the threat picture, not a claim that the dataset prescribes one control for every organization.
ENISA’s 2025 report describes increased abuse of cyber dependencies—including open-source repositories, malicious browser extensions, and service-provider breaches—and the potential for those compromises to amplify risk across connected ecosystems. Its 2026 overview likewise says dependencies expand the attack surface. A supplier, software component, identity provider, or communications service can therefore become part of an operational incident even when the organization’s own systems were not the initial target.
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Begin with the outcomes the organization cannot afford to lose, then work backward to the systems, people, facilities, data, and external services required to deliver them. This makes security priorities legible to executives and operations teams: a vulnerability matters not only because it exists, but because of what it could interrupt and how difficult that service would be to restore.
1. Map services, assets, and dependencies
- Identify services whose disruption could have the greatest safety, economic, or societal impact.
- For each service, map the applications, infrastructure, operational technology, identity systems, data, facilities, suppliers, and communications it depends on.
- Record which dependencies are shared across multiple services, where a single point of failure exists, and who owns each relationship.
- Validate the map with operational teams and suppliers; an inventory that omits an important operational system or third party can misdirect both risk reduction and recovery work.
ENISA recommends comprehensive asset discovery and resilience planning for interconnected systems and services. In practice, the map should be useful during both routine prioritization and an incident: teams need to know what can be isolated, what must keep running, and what must be restored first.
2. Prioritize exploitable exposure by consequence
Use the service map to distinguish exposed, exploitable systems supporting critical operations from lower-consequence assets. A workable prioritization process considers whether a system is reachable, whether a vulnerability is exploitable in the organization’s environment, the consequence of compromise, and the availability and operational risk of a fix or mitigation. Set remediation or mitigation ownership and track exceptions with a clear rationale and review point.
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ENISA’s 2025 incident data supports treating vulnerability exploitation as a material intrusion path; the specific prioritization method above is an implementation recommendation, not a quoted ENISA prescription. In infrastructure environments, coordinate changes with operators so that patching and mitigation do not introduce unacceptable safety or availability risks.
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3. Plan for intrusion and service disruption together
Ransomware, DDoS, cyberespionage, and incidents involving suppliers or other dependencies can affect both the confidentiality of information and the availability of essential services. Playbooks should link technical response decisions to operational and safety requirements rather than treating response as an isolated security-team procedure.
- Define who can authorize isolation of a system or connection, and what evidence or operational checks are needed first.
- Specify how teams will communicate internally, with suppliers, public authorities, and affected stakeholders when normal channels are unavailable.
- Identify safe alternate operating modes, manual procedures, or service prioritization rules where they are feasible.
- Agree on escalation thresholds and decision ownership across security, operations, legal, communications, and executive leadership.
4. Demonstrate that recovery works
A written backup or continuity plan is not proof that a service can be restored after a destructive or prolonged incident. CISA defines resilience as “the ability to prepare for threats and hazards, adapt to changing conditions, and withstand and recover rapidly from adverse conditions and disruptions,” attributing the definition to National Security Memorandum-22. CISA Resilience Services
Exercise restoration and decision-making against realistic scenarios, including loss of a supplier or identity service where relevant. Confirm that backups are accessible and usable, restoration dependencies are understood, integrity checks are performed, and teams can make service-prioritization decisions under pressure. Track organization-specific recovery time, recovery point, integrity, and dependency-restoration measures. The cited sources do not prescribe universal numerical targets; leaders should set targets according to service obligations, safety, and operational requirements.
5. Organize improvement with a framework
CISA’s Cross-Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals are a subset of practices intended to meaningfully reduce risks to critical infrastructure operations and the public, organized to align with the functions of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. They can help leaders establish a baseline and track improvement, but they are not a complete sector-specific compliance regime. CISA Cross-Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals
Use a framework to expose gaps and establish ownership, then add sector obligations, operational constraints, and service-specific recovery requirements that a cross-sector baseline cannot settle on its own.
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Coordinate responsibility beyond the security team
CISA says meaningful progress in critical-infrastructure security and resilience requires coordinated action among government, private-sector owners and operators, businesses, and individuals. At organization level, that means assigning an executive accountable for service resilience, involving operational owners in security and recovery decisions, engaging suppliers on relevant dependencies, and agreeing incident communication paths before a crisis. CISA Resilience Services
Coordination is especially important where one dependency supports several services or where isolation can affect safety and availability. Establish who can make time-sensitive decisions, who must be consulted, and how teams will share status when an incident crosses organizational boundaries.
How to compare resilience investments
Tools and programs should be compared by whether they change an operational outcome, not by the number of alerts, assets, or features they produce. The criteria below are decision aids derived from the threat and resilience evidence; they are not a vendor ranking, and no single control fits every sector.
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| Comparison criterion | Question for leaders | Evidence to request |
|---|---|---|
| Service impact | Does the investment reduce risk to an essential service and its most consequential dependencies? | A clear link between covered systems or processes and the services they support; identified gaps and residual risk. |
| Asset and supplier coverage | Does it represent relevant assets, suppliers, and operational technology accurately? | Validated coverage against the service and dependency map, including known blind spots. |
| Exposure reduction | Can teams identify and prioritize exploitable exposure, then act on it? | Evidence that findings are assigned, remediated or mitigated, and exceptions are governed. |
| Detection, containment, and recovery | Does it improve the ability to detect disruption, contain it safely, and restore service? | Exercise results and recovery evidence tied to realistic scenarios and organization-specific targets. |
| Operational compatibility | Can it work with the existing environment and safe deployment constraints? | Integration requirements, operational impacts, and the change controls needed for deployment. |
| Staffing and lifecycle burden | Can the organization sustain the investment through implementation and ongoing operation? | Ownership, required skills, maintenance responsibilities, and lifecycle demands. |
| Operational outcome | Is there evidence that the investment improves service resilience rather than simply increasing tool count? | Before-and-after operational measures or exercise findings that show a meaningful change. |
These criteria help executives compare proposals on service consequence, dependency coverage, vulnerability reduction, operational fit, and demonstrated recovery capability. CISA’s cross-sector goals can provide a common improvement baseline, while service maps and exercises show whether a particular investment addresses the organization’s own continuity risks.
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