The cyber risks facing Brazilian companies are no longer an abstraction reserved for large corporations or tech news headlines. To give you an idea, Brazil recorded 753.8 billion cyberattack attempts, according to the 2026 Global Threat Report, cementing the country as one of the most frequent targets in the world.
During the same period, Brazilian organizations suffered an average of 3,736 attacks per company, per week, representing a 37% increase compared to the previous year, according to Check Point Research.
Yes, we are facing a challenging scenario, but it is one that can be understood; those who know the risk vectors that truly threaten their operations are better equipped to build a proportional and effective defense.
This article presents the 8 main cyber risks that Brazilian companies need to monitor in 2027. We have organized the content into 3 categories: risks associated with people and identity; infrastructure and technology; and governance. Read on.
Regardless of a company's level of technological maturity, the most successful cyberattacks rarely start with complex infrastructure breaches.
It starts with people, for example, a compromised credential, a link clicked at the wrong moment, or a tool installed without approval.
They are also the most well-known to the media and the public, even though they are the easiest to fall for.
Therefore, knowing these entry vectors is essential to prioritize the right controls, as well as understanding them in greater depth. See below:
Phishing phishing remains the most widely used attack vector globally, and its evolution in recent years has made it significantly harder to identify.
With the use of generative artificial intelligence, criminals craft personalized messages that mimic the communication style of vendors, colleagues, and leaders within the organization itself.
Spear phishing, a method aimed at specific targets such as CFOs and IT managers, is particularly concerning because it exploits real-world contexts and publicly available data about the victim.
A single click on a fraudulent link can grant an attacker access to systems, valid credentials, and freedom of movement within the corporate environment.
Weak passwords, reused across multiple services or exposed in previous breaches represent one of the most exploited cyber risks today.
Criminal groups use databases of leaked credentials to carry out credential stuffing attacks, automatically testing login and password combinations on corporate platforms.
The Microsoft Digital Defense Report indicates that more than 90% of accounts compromised in identity attacks did not have multi-factor authentication enabled, demonstrating that a relatively simple control to implement would have blocked the overwhelming majority of these incidents.
The use of applications and artificial intelligence tools without approval or monitoring by the IT department creates blind spots in the security perimeter that no firewall or antivirus can cover.
When an employee pastes financial customer data into ChatGPT or syncs corporate files to a personal storage account, that information leaves the company's controlled environment without a record and without the possibility of an audit.
In fact, 63% of organizations still do not have formal AI governance policies, according to data compiled by Vantico, making Shadow AI one of the fastest-growing cyber risks for 2027.
While vectors linked to people exploit behaviors and credentials, infrastructure risks target the systems and technologies that support operations.
Consequently, when a successful attack occurs at this layer, the impact is immediate and potentially irreversible without a pre-structured recovery strategy.
Thus, we have:
Ransomware has evolved from opportunistic attacks into a highly organized criminal business model.
In 2026, Brazil reached third place in the global ranking of ransomware attacks in a single month for the first time, according to data from the Ransomware.Liveplatform.
Between January and July 2026, there were 99 confirmed attacks in the country, accounting for 36.3% of all ransomware incidents in Latin America during that period.
Criminal groups now adopt a double extortion model: in addition to encrypting data, they threaten to publish it if the ransom is not paid, increasing the financial and reputational impact of the attack.
Outdated operating systems, unpatched software, and network equipment with old firmware are classic intrusion vectors that continue to be systematically exploited.
Ransomware groups and other malicious actors actively monitor the disclosure of known vulnerabilities and act quickly to exploit environments that have not yet applied the available patches.
Furthermore, legacy systems found in many mid-sized companies were developed in contexts where security was not a design priority, carrying structural flaws that cannot be fixed with patches alone.
One of the fastest-growing cyber risk vectors in recent years is the attack via suppliers, partners, and service providers with access to the corporate environment.
When a third party with legitimate connections to a company's system is compromised, the attacker gains an apparently trusted entry point, capable of bypassing a large portion of perimeter controls.
Therefore, supplier security must be part of the company's risk strategy, not just internal security.
There are cyber risks that do not depend on an external attacker to materialize.
They grow internally, fueled by the absence of clear policies, a lack of visibility into the environment, and the accumulation of technology decisions made without security criteria.
These governance risks are, in many cases, what create the conditions for all other risks to become more severe.
That is why we have listed them below:
• Absence of security policies and frameworks: companies that operate without a formal information security policy, structured access management, or a defined incident response process cannot measure their exposure or act in a coordinated manner when an attack occurs. The lack of governance amplifies every other cyber risk present in the environment.
• Insider threats and privilege creep: employees with access levels that exceed what is necessary for their roles, accounts of former employees that were never deactivated, and permissions granted for convenience and never reviewed create a fertile ground for incidents, whether through intentional action or the exploitation of these accounts by external attackers. The principle of least privilege, when not applied, turns any compromised credential into a key with much broader access than it should have.
• Lack of LGPD compliance: a Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados estabelece obrigações técnicas e organizacionais para o tratamento de dados pessoais. Ambientes sem controles adequados de acesso, sem políticas de retenção e sem mecanismos de rastreabilidade estão não apenas mais expostos a incidentes, mas também mais vulneráveis às sanções da ANPD em caso de violação, com multas que podem chegar a 2% do faturamento anual, limitadas a R$ 50 milhões por infração.
Compreender os riscos cibernéticos é o primeiro passo, porém transformar esse conhecimento em proteção real exige uma abordagem que integre as diferentes camadas do problema: identidade, infraestrutura, dados e governança.
A Frayha estrutura estratégias de cibersegurança integradas, combinando as ferramentas do ecossistema Microsoft com parceiros especializados para cobrir cada um dos vetores de risco apresentados neste artigo.
O diagnóstico gratuito da Frayha é o ponto de partida para entender quais dos 8 riscos apresentados neste artigo são mais críticos para o ambiente específico da sua empresa.
👉Solicite um diagnóstico gratuito e descubra quais riscos cibernéticos representam maior ameaça para a sua operação.
Sim, e em alguns casos de forma ainda mais intensa. Grupos criminosos que atuam com ransomware-as-a-service direcionam ataques para empresas de menor porte precisamente porque elas tendem a ter estruturas de segurança menos maduras, equipes de TI menores e maior probabilidade de pagar o resgate para retomar a operação rapidamente. A percepção de que ataques cibernéticos sofisticados afetam apenas grandes corporações é uma das crenças que mais expõem médias empresas.
A priorização deve ser baseada em um diagnóstico do ambiente atual, cruzando a probabilidade de cada vetor de risco com o impacto potencial para a operação específica da empresa. Em geral, controles de identidade como MFA e acesso condicional têm custo de implementação baixo e impacto imediato na redução da superfície de ataque, sendo os primeiros a serem ativados. Em seguida, a cobertura de endpoints com detecção e resposta ativa e a estruturação de backup imutável formam a base de proteção para os demais vetores.
Ter Microsoft 365 disponibiliza um conjunto robusto de ferramentas de segurança, porém a disponibilidade das ferramentas não equivale à sua ativação e configuração correta. Ambientes Microsoft 365 sem autenticação multifator, sem acesso condicional configurado, sem políticas de DLP ativas e sem revisão de permissões continuam expostos à maioria dos riscos apresentados neste artigo. O diferencial está em ativar e configurar adequadamente o que já está disponível na licença contratada.
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