From Ransomware to Residency: Inside the Rise of the Digital Parasite

Picus Red Report 2026 documents a clear attacker pivot from noisy ransomware to 'digital parasite' tactics that favour credential theft, stealthy persistence (process injection, autostart execution, application-layer C2), and sandbox evasion; defenders should prioritise credential hygiene, behaviour-based detection, and continuous adversarial validation to reduce dwell time and detect long-lived access.