“This improvement boosts efficiency, allows for more sophisticated and extensive assessments, and enables security teams to focus on process improvement and strategic work,” the 29-page study reads. There’s also automated evidence collection for audit reporting and to ensure cloud infrastructures and organizational practices meet HIPAA, SOC 2, and ISO requirements. As cloud applications and environments don’t always require local access, disgruntled employees and users who were improperly off-boarded could steal sensitive data or deploy malware attacks from the inside.
Shadow IT is the result of employees adopting cloud services to do their jobs. Rising privacy and cybersecurity laws will compel companies to implement more robust security measures and accelerate breach reporting protocols. Consistent training programs enable employees to identify phishing, engineering and cloud-related attack methods, thereby minimizing human mistakes.
With cloud deployments, companies lack control over their underlying infrastructure, making many traditional security solutions less effective. Additionally, link-based sharing makes it impossible to revoke access to only a single recipient of the shared link. Many clouds provide the option to explicitly invite a collaborator via email or to share a link that enables anyone with the URL to access the shared resource. As a result, many traditional tools for achieving network visibility are not effective for cloud environments, and some organizations lack cloud-focused security tools. An attacker with an employee’s credentials can access sensitive data or functionality, and compromised customer credentials give full control over their online account.
- The jury is still out on whether most businesses get any measurable benefit from implementing artificial intelligence in their organizations, and the debate is likely to get more contentious over time.
- The training and awareness will include topics such as identifying phishing attempts, handling sensitive data properly, using cloud services securely, and the importance of security policies.
- We’ve seen the greatest increases in high severity alerts, meaning indicators of attacks are successfully targeting critical cloud resources as explained in Table 1.
- These kinds of attacks are increasing, and they are a very big threat to organizations since they can leak all their sensitive data in this form.
- The Cloud Threat Actor Index highlights the top actors targeting cloud infrastructure, as well as nation-state actors that have been known to use the cloud to conduct attacks.
Top Advanced Persistent Threats Utilizing and Targeting Cloud Infrastructure
As a result, they may find cloud security vulnerabilities of different proportions scattered across this dynamic infrastructure. According to Wiz Research’s 2025 findings, 54% of cloud environments face vulnerabilities due to serverless functions and exposed virtual machines (VMs) that contain critical data. As containers and ephemeral resources constantly change, and access requests surge, security teams are left scrambling. Schuyler Brown, Chairman of the Board, began working with startups as one of the first employees at Cross Commerce Media.
- Of particular note, attackers frequently targeted serverless IAM tokens resulting in remote command-line usage.
- Kubernetes events sit somewhere else.
- They are using AI-driven threat detection systems to identify ransomware attacks quickly.
- Globally, there were over 2,200 ransomware incidents just in that quarter, and cloud intrusion attempts jumped 75% from 2022 to 2023.
And while they may use traditional vulnerability management solutions to identify and remediate vulnerabilities, these often lack the context that businesses need to prioritize low-risk vulnerabilities. The volume of cloud security vulnerabilities in dynamic IT environments is often overwhelming for businesses. In 2023, Jelly Bean settled the case for $293,771 due to the failure, which potentially exposed 3.5 million applicants and enrollees. Because the company had to comply with the HIPAA Security Rule, it faced severe consequences when a federal inquiry found that the breach was a direct result of the company neglecting to patch multiple site vulnerabilities. You could face cloud threats for months without detection if you aren’t actively monitoring your cloud environment.
Weaknesses like these leave businesses more vulnerable to misconfigurations. Both let businesses tailor applications or software components to their unique functionality and infrastructure needs. Because cloud computing offers ease of access, DevOps and security teams often favor open-source technology or free code.
Why Cloud Threats Matter Now
Many security teams view the service as high risk because AI-detection tools often require users to submit full text, source code, or other sensitive material for analysis. In the average organization, both the number of users committing data policy violations and the number of data policy incidents has increased twofold over the past year, with an average of 3% of genAI users committing an average of 223 genAI data policy violations per month. In this section, we examine the sensitive data exposure risks that accompany such a dramatic increase in genAI use, highlighting a twofold rise in data policy violations over the same time period. Google Gemini demonstrated strong upward momentum, rising from 46% to 69%, indicating a growing trend of organizations using https://consultprofound.com/top-10-technology-trends-to-watch-2025.html?noamp=mobile multiple SaaS genAI services with overlapping functionality. The chart below shows how the adoption of the top genAI applications has shifted over the past year across regions and industries.
Top 10 Cloud Security Threats
If you’re an admin at a large organization with security responsibilities, that advice is worth careful consideration and incorporation into your existing security measures. Each section of the report includes recommendations for IT professionals to follow for securing cloud infrastructure. The report notes that “45% of intrusions resulted in data theft without immediate extortion attempts at the time of the engagement, and these were often characterized by prolonged dwell times and stealthy persistence.” The report calls this “the most rapidly growing means of exfiltrating data from an organization.” The report notes that “malicious insiders” — including employees, contractors, consultants, and interns — are sending confidential data outside the organization.
However, although the promises to businesses from the adoption of the technology are diversified, tremendous security risks of cloud computing accompany them. It also presents how SentinelOne aids businesses https://usenethealth.com/find-free-accommodation-and-breakfast-free-of/the-top-five-free-and-free-hotel-keeper-solutions.html with advanced cloud security in modern times. This article outlines 17 security risks of cloud computing and discusses best practices for mitigation. When these trusted components were compromised or vulnerable, a single failure was able to cascade across many environments. The primary impact of these additions was not to create new risk categories, but rather to increase the number of places where familiar weaknesses could appear—often closer to sensitive data and privileged resources. Vulnerabilities, exposed secrets, and misconfigurations continued to define how cloud intrusions began.
66% of security leaders are lacking confidence in their ability to respond to and detect cloud security threats in real-time. Most organizations find that the right answer to improving cloud security is to use a combination of tools and services and not rely on a single solution. A serious problem with cloud security is that a single data breach can magnify misconfigurations and cause damage to multiple systems. Cloud Security Statistics show companies should exercise caution when embracing automation and emerging technology trends. It simplifies the security process and means organizations must depend on their vendor to handle encryption keys and protect their data. Cloud data encryption is applied on the application and infrastructure level and requires ongoing maintenance and support.