The line between a digital breach and a physical disruption has officially vanished. The 2026 Transportation Industry Cybersecurity Trends Report by the National Motor Freight Traffic Association (NMFTA) makes one thing clear: trucking cybersecurity is no longer just an IT concern—it is a "full-spectrum operational resilience challenge."
For cybersecurity leaders, the message in the report is urgent. The convergence of traditional cargo theft and sophisticated cybercrime has created a dynamic threat environment where a compromised credential can lead directly to a stolen shipment.
The era of the opportunistic, lone-wolf hacker is over. The report highlights a shift toward a structured, corporate-like ecosystem of cybercrime. Threat groups now operate with specialized departments—ranging from access brokers who harvest credentials for a few hundred dollars to specialized monetization teams that handle cryptocurrency laundering.
The 18-minute breakout: The average "breakout time"—the period between an initial compromise and lateral movement—fell to just 18 minutes in late 2025. This is faster than most human defenders can manually respond.
AI-driven deception: Attackers are using generative AI to create flawless phishing emails, deepfake voice calls, and counterfeit shipping documentation that are nearly indistinguishable from the real thing.
Weaponization of trusted tools: Ransomware operators are increasingly using legitimate remote management and file-transfer tools (like AnyDesk or ScreenConnect) already present in your environment to exfiltrate data and evade detection.
The report identifies concentration risk as a systemic vulnerability. The transportation sector’s heavy reliance on a narrow set of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers and integration partners means that a single breach at a vendor can ripple across hundreds of downstream carriers and brokers.
For dependent industries: Industries like retail, manufacturing, and energy that depend on the transportation supply chain must recognize that their operational continuity is tied to the cybersecurity maturity of their logistics partners.
For vendors: There is an intensifying regulatory and market pressure for "secure-by-design" principles. Vendors must anticipate more rigorous risk assessments from fleets and stricter federal mandates regarding incident reporting and data privacy.
One of the most concerning trends for 2026 is the blurring of boundaries between cyber intrusions and physical crimes. Organized cargo crime rings are now adopting cyber tactics to:
Hijack Accounts: Taking over Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) accounts to manipulate load tenders.
Manipulate Data: Altering digital Bills of Lading (BOLs) and GPS locations to facilitate the physical theft of freight.
Spoof and Jam: Using GPS spoofing to conceal unauthorized route changes during thefts.
To stay ahead, cybersecurity must be integrated into every layer of the business, from maintenance to safety and operations. The report recommends a shift from reactive security to a proactive, converged strategy:
Adopt Zero-Trust Architectures: Implement segmented networks that isolate critical systems from general IT assets.
Verify Out-of-Band: Train employees to confirm payment instructions and pickup authorizations through separate, verified communication channels.
Continuous Monitoring: Invest in automated detection and anomaly-recognition solutions that can spot unauthorized load cancellations or abnormal login patterns in real-time.
Collaborate: Engage in industry-wide threat intelligence sharing. The sector’s resilience hinges on collective defense rather than isolated efforts.
According to the report's executive summary, "The transportation sector’s security posture in 2026 must extend far beyond technical controls. Effective preparedness requires the integration of cybersecurity into every layer of the business. From intelligence gathering and sharing through response and recovery actions, the next phase of resilience will hinge on convergence; on treating physical security, operation security, and cybersecurity as components of a single, holistic security strategy. This has become the requisite baseline in organizational resilience planning."
Some stats from the report:
Throughout 2025, cargo crime trends remained elevated. CargoNet reported that in Q3 2025, cargo theft claims reached $111.88
million (Verisk, 2025). As staggering as this number is, it is well understood that reported cargo crimes only represent a small percentage of total cargo crimes experienced across the sector due to widespread underreporting. While traditional hotspots such as California and Texas contributed to year-overyear increases, the most dramatic growth occurred in the New York City metropolitan
area, specifically New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania (up 110% and 33%, respectively). Analysts attributed these spikes to the adoption of cybercrime tactics by organized criminal networks who leveraged social engineering to impersonate carriers, hijack Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) accounts, and manipulate load tenders and other dispatch documentation. The result is a seamless blend of cybercrime and physical theft, where stolen credentials, fake identities, and compromised systems have facilitated physical theft of cargo at
unprecedented levels.
Supply-chain compromise emerged as another critical risk vector as highlighted in multiple high-profile incidents in 2025. Each incident exposed the same structural weakness: The transportation sector’s
reliance on a web of software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers and integration partners. Adversaries are exploiting this trust model,
compromising a vendor or a platform and pivoting into multiple connected fleets, shippers or brokers. This concentration risk
represents not just an IT risk, but a systemic supply chain vulnerability.
Despite this heightened risk environment, there are encouraging trends. Industry collaboration through the National Motor Freight Traffic Association, Inc.’s (NMFTA) cybersecurity initiatives, including the Cybersecurity Best Practices Guidebooks, Vendor Risk Assessment Framework, and Cargo Crime Reduction Framework, has begun to influence operating norms. Awareness training, Electronic Logging Devices (ELDs) and telematics device validation, use of multi-factor authentication (MFA), and cybersecurity incident response preparedness are increasingly seen as core competencies of fleet operations rather than optional security controls. Additionally, transportation associations, industry stakeholders, law enforcement, and government agencies are promoting a shared defense model that treats cybersecurity as an essential component of supply-chain continuity."
ReliaQuest’s intelligence reporting on the “professionalization of cybercrime” found that modern threat groups are operating
as full-scale enterprises, complete with recruiting pipelines, training programs, and specialized departments focusing on functions such as access brokering, AI-driven reconnaissance, and financial operations
(ReliaQuest, ReliaQuest 2025 Trucking Trends NMFTA Internal Intelligence Report, 2025). Instead of relying on generalized hackers, these organizations now recruit domain experts who understand industry-specific technologies such as TMSs, telematics, and cloud-based applications. This trend signals a structural shift in the ways that adversaries operate. Bad actors now view the transportation supply chain not as a peripheral target, but as a mature, highvalue target domain that is worth investing significant time, resources, and dedicated expertise due to the high potential reward for their efforts.
Particularly concerning in 2025 was the growing crossover of Tools, Tactics and Procedures, (TTPs) between cybercrime syndicates and organized cargo crime rings. Intelligence collected throughout 2025
highlighted multiple cases in which traditional cargo crime groups employed cybercrime TTPs to identify, track, and intercept cargo
shipments. Cyber-enabled cargo thieves infiltrated dispatch systems, fraudulently booked loads by impersonating legitimate carriers, and spoofed or jammed GPS signals to facilitate physical theft of shipments. This evolution of tactics underscores the blurring of the boundaries between cyber intrusions and physical crimes in the transportation sector.
Cyber-enabled cargo crime continued to leverage the blind spots between cybersecurity, operational security and physical security. Organized cargo crime operations increasingly combined social engineering with direct cyber intrusions to compromise cargo shipments. Attackers gained access to carrier portals, FMCSA
profiles, and load boards through phishing and stolen or purchased credentials, leveraging this access to alter dispatch orders, transmit fraudulent bills of lading (BOLs), and compromise carrier identities.
The intersection of operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) will continue to expose new vulnerabilities across
the critical infrastructure sectors in 2026. As telematics systems, routing software, and vehicle maintenance platforms expand
their integrations into cloud ecosystems, the potential risk of an attacker pivoting from IT networks into vehicle systems grows. Additionally, with the transportation sector’s heavy reliance on telematics systems, door sensors, temperature control units, cargo monitoring devices, and other similar technology, the threat landscape is extending into these essential systems as well. These risks represent serious potential threat vectors for the transportation sector and warrant diligent monitoring in order to ensure detection and response preparedness across the industry.
The fragmentation of major ransomware groups such as LockBit and RansomHub in mid-2025 resulted in an explosion of smaller,
specialized crews. By late 2025, more than 80 active ransomware brands were recorded globally, dozens of which targeted companies in the transportation sector or vendors on which the sector depends.
These groups frequently combine double extortion tactics with data manipulation. Stolen files were often altered before being published on leak sites, magnifying reputational damage. Attackers exploited
public perception of cybersecurity weakness to coerce faster payments by threatening to publicize “evidence” of poor cyber hygiene
to customers and partners.
One of the most alarming developments in 2025 that is projected to carry over into 2026, is a sharp uptick in the number of so-called “one-day” attacks, the rapid exploitation of newly disclosed but unpatched
vulnerabilities. In several incidents, exploits have been detected in the wild within 24 hours of vulnerability disclosure—well before vendors published patches and far outpacing the ability of IT teams to apply
fixes. This contraction of the exploitation cycle is being driven by automated scanning and weaponization of proofs-of-concept
by threat groups operating continuous reconnaissance networks enhanced with AI-enabled tools. The CISA Known Exploited
Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog expanded at an unprecedented rate in 2025, with numerous entries related to commonly used remote
access gateways and management APIs. This acceleration of exploit development underscores how continually shrinking patching timelines have become the new reality for defenders, particularly in critical
infrastructure environments operating around-the-clock systems.
Nation-state actors continued to probe and, in some cases, gain access to our nation’s critical infrastructure, as evidenced by the actions of groups such as Salt Typhoon and Volt Typhoon. While there are limited
instances of the transportation sector being targeted directly, the sector is critical infrastructure, with trucking specifically forming the backbone of the national supply chain. Supply chain attacks, where
component suppliers are compromised and bad actors gain long-term access to vehicle systems, have emerged as a key risk.
Machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence now stands at the center of both offensive and defensive cybersecurity strategies. From a threat perspective, AI has democratized deception. ReliaQuest’s
The 2025 report detailed how generative AI models are being leveraged by attackers to create contextually accurate phishing
emails, spoofed BOLs and invoices, and even dispatch-related messages tailored specifically to a target organization (ReliaQuest, ReliaQuest 2025 Trucking Trends NMFTA Internal Intelligence Report,
2025). Gone are the grammatical errors and inconsistent formatting that once served as clear red-flags. Instead, modern phishing lures include accurate shipping references, legitimate logos, and personalized content crafted from scraped online data. These
highly believable phishing campaigns have driven a significant increase in social engineering success rates across the transportation sector.
As we move into 2026, the perimeter is no longer just the network—it is every employee, every partner, and every piece of cargo in transit.