Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2026. Read them in this 18th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Gary Orenstein, Chief Customer Officer at Bitwarden
As organizations move into 2026, identity security is shaped by conditions that traditional defenses were never designed to handle. AI-driven phishing, impersonation, and automated social engineering now blend seamlessly into everyday online activity, making malicious requests increasingly difficult to distinguish from legitimate ones.
At the same time, identity risk no longer exists in a single, controlled environment. Work credentials are used alongside personal accounts across shared devices, synced browsers, and multiple applications. Decisions about authentication and access happen continuously, often without clear signals that something is wrong.
Expecting users in these environments to recognize and respond correctly to every identity threat is no longer realistic. Awareness training and static controls still matter, yet they cannot keep pace with attacks designed to exploit user behavior at scale. In 2026, identity security will shift from teaching people what to watch for to actively guiding the next secure step at the moment risk appears.
Addressing the human element in an AI world
Human behavior will continue to sit at the center of identity security risk in 2026, but not because users are careless or uninformed. The nature of identity attacks is changing faster than human judgment can reasonably adapt. AI enables phishing, impersonation, and social engineering across email, SMS, collaboration platforms, and voice channels that closely mirror legitimate workflows and trusted requests.
Verification prompts, password resets, shared access requests, and login challenges now appear frequently enough that even security-conscious users are forced to make rapid decisions under uncertainty. The result is compounded by cognitive overload at the exact moment attackers are trying to exploit normal account activity.
This shift makes a purely human-centered defense model unsustainable. When identity threats are designed to look routine, asking individuals to consistently distinguish real from fake becomes an unreliable control. In the coming year, identity security strategies will increasingly assume that users cannot and should not be the primary line of defense in every interaction. Protection must account for normal behavior, not perfect behavior.
Moving beyond awareness training
Identity threats quickly adapt to become less distinguishable from routine activity, driving a need to move beyond awareness training as a primary defense. Training and policy still matter, but they are no longer sufficient on their own. The burden placed on individuals to recognize subtle deception and act correctly in real time has become misaligned with how modern identity attacks operate.
Identity security will continue to support users rather than test them. Instead of treating the human element as an unavoidable weakness, organizations will seek to make it an asset by ensuring employees are empowered with clear signals and guided next steps to respond to security risk. Visibility into weak, reused, or exposed credentials gives users and security teams shared awareness of where action is needed. Additionally, guided remediation translates that awareness into concrete, contextual workflows to reduce hesitation and error.
By embedding risk insight and guidance directly into daily interactions, identity security shifts from reactive correction to real-time enablement. The human element doesn’t disappear in this model. It becomes more effective, supported by systems designed to intervene at the moment risk emerges and behavior falters.
Assembling the toolkit for guided action
Identity security is shifting toward guided action, meaning a distinct set of capabilities will become standard components of modern identity defense. These tools share a common goal: reducing the cognitive burden on users while enabling faster, more reliable responses to real risk.
Credential exposure and reuse monitoring expands as organizations recognize that compromised credentials often surface outside traditional security visibility. A recent Bitwarden survey revealed that more than 31% of U.S. individuals reuse credentials. Continuous monitoring for weak, reused, or exposed credentials tied to organizational identities increasingly functions as an early warning system, allowing users and security teams to act before credential misuse escalates into broader compromise.
Real-time phishing interception plays a critical role as attackers design threats that blend into normal login and verification flows. Rather than relying on users to recognize deception after it happens, organizations will adopt controls that intervene at the point of credential entry or session handoff. By interrupting risky interactions in real time, these systems reduce dependence on individual judgment while preserving productivity.
Alert volumes outpace manual triage, making automated prioritization and remediation essential. Identity security platforms need to assess context, elevate high-impact risks, and guide remediation steps directly within user workflows. This approach shortens response time, improves completion rates, and reduces alert fatigue, ensuring security teams can focus attention where it matters most.
Together, these capabilities signal a broader shift away from awareness as the primary safeguard and toward protection that adapts to user behavior in real time. Guided action does not remove humans from the loop; it reshapes the dynamic so people can act with confidence when it counts.
Building resilience from within
Digital access is becoming more distributed and adaptive, and organizations will respond by placing greater emphasis on resilience built into daily operations rather than external safeguards alone. Fewer security lessons arrive neatly packaged as breach postmortems or centralized guidance. Instead, enterprises and institutions will increasingly rely on internal visibility, peer collaboration, and embedded controls to identify and respond to security risks as they emerge.
In this environment, guided action becomes a foundation for resilience rather than a point solution. By surfacing risk and supporting timely response, identity security systems help organizations absorb attacks without depending on perfect user decisions or reactive correction. This model enables security teams to learn continuously from real interactions, refine controls over time, and adapt defenses to evolving attack patterns.
Resilience in 2026 will be measured less by how well organizations educate users in advance and more by how effectively systems support users in the moment. Identity security strategies that assume normal human behavior will be better positioned to withstand the next wave of AI-enabled threats without adding friction or operational burden.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gary Orenstein is the chief customer officer at Bitwarden leading the customer success and marketing functions. Before Bitwarden, Gary served in executive marketing and product roles at enterprise infrastructure companies Yellowbrick Data and SingleStore, and flash memory pioneer Fusion-io, which went public during his tenure there. Earlier in his career he led marketing at Compellent which after its IPO was acquired by Dell. Gary holds a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College and a master’s in business administration from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
