The biggest shift the IBM X-Force team observed in 2023 was a pronounced surge in cyberthreats targeting identities. Attackers have a historical inclination to choose the path of least resistance in pursuit of their objectives. In this era, the focus has shifted towards logging in rather than hacking in, highlighting the relative ease of acquiring credentials compared to exploiting vulnerabilities or executing phishing campaigns. Lack of identity protections was corroborated by IBM X-Force penetration testing data for 2023, which ranked identification and authentication failures as the second most common finding.