Red Hat’s 2026 State of Cloud-Native Security Report reveals that 97% of organizations operating cloud-native environments experienced at least one security incident in the past year. The report, published on March 24, highlights that most incidents stemmed from execution failures, misconfigurations, and immature security strategies rather than sophisticated attacks.
The findings expose a significant gap between perception and reality: while 56% of organizations believe they maintain a proactive security posture, only 39% have a mature, well-defined cloud-native security strategy. An additional 22% admit to having no formal strategy at all, meaning six in ten companies operate with confidence but lack structural safeguards.
Basic security controls show uneven adoption. Three-quarters of organizations implement identity and access management (IAM), yet only half use container image signing. Runtime protection remains inconsistent across the industry. Organizations with mature strategies report 61% greater confidence in their supply chain security, underscoring the impact of proper planning.
Security continues to impede software delivery, with 74% of companies delaying deployments due to security concerns—a recurring trend noted in previous years. The report emphasizes that widespread adoption of containers, Kubernetes, and cloud services is not being matched by equivalent advancements in security maturity, leading to avoidable breaches, rising costs, and diminished productivity and customer trust.
