Despite the cloud security risks discussed above, nearly 94% of companies rely on cloud services to run servers, host apps, or store mission-critical data. Organize security awareness training https://caribbean21.com/what-is-a-cloud-investment-platform-and-what-is-it-for.html to ensure employees understand their role in preventing and dealing with cloud security risks. Before cloud computing, companies would store all data in one location, which made it much easier to keep assets safe with traditional castle-and-moat network security. For example, a compromised CDN could distribute malicious content to multiple websites that, on their own, might have otherwise sound security measures.
Google’s secure-by-default strategy and enhanced credential protections are likely closing traditional paths, forcing threat actors to adopt faster, more automated paths through unpatched applications. In the second half of 2025, threat actors exploited software-based vulnerabilities (44.5%) more frequently than weak credentials (27.2%), a significant increase from the start of 2025, when software exploitation accounted for less than 3% of incidents. Third-party software vulnerabilities take the leadFor the first time since we began publishing the CTHR in 2021, we observed a tactical pivot by threat actors. This acceleration, fueled by threat actors using AI-assisted to rapidly probe targets and discover unpatched applications probing, means organizations should move beyond reactive, manual security — as soon as they can.
Although not growing at the same pace as AI adoption, the increasing number of people sending data to personal cloud apps poses a growing data security risk. Over the past year, the percentage of users uploading data to personal cloud apps has increased by 21%. These strategies include blocking uploads to personal apps, providing real-time user guidance to help employees handle sensitive information safely, and leveraging DLP solutions to prevent unauthorized data transfers to unmanaged services. For the remainder of this report, we are going to shift our focus to related legacy risks on top of which these new risks have been added.
When you encrypt data, you transform it into a format that users can only read if they have the encryption key. In 2023, glitches in Microsoft Windows and Office products could have allowed threat actors to conduct remote code execution attacks, exfiltrate data, and lock access for legitimate users. Because cloud APIs are the connective tissue that facilitates communication and data exchange between cloud software and applications, API vulnerabilities are a prominent attack vector for threat actors.
Since the cloud is interconnected, this attack quickly spreads out across the entire organization’s cloud infrastructure. There’s also an increased focus on securing API communications, which are often targeted in MiTM attacks. Attackers make use of botnets and IoT devices to carry the attack on a larger scale, which can overwhelm cloud resources.
A vast quantity of devices with varying security measures https://thetimefinder.com/soa-os23/ complicates the enforcement of uniform protections, throughout edge settings. As organizations implement an increasing number of distributed applications, in less-secure areas edge computing will broaden the attack surface. Cloud systems are built to expand yet adversaries take advantage of this adaptability to cause swift depletion of resources and increased operating expenses. Detecting insider threats is challenging since they come from users who possess access, to cloud environments. Most cloud security breaches result from misconfigurations. Provide hackers full access, to your entire cloud infrastructure when breached.
This blind spot enables lateral movement and data exfiltration undetected. But its increasingly ephemeral nature adds layers of abstraction to your environment that can leave you exposed to threats if not properly secured. Misconfigured storage buckets, exposed management interfaces and incorrect network controls are responsible for the majority of cloud breaches. Serverless functions, short-lived containers and decentralized development practices exacerbate visibility and control challenges. As cloud infrastructures grow more complex, dynamic and ephemeral, attackers are exploiting the widening security gaps faster than most teams can respond.
Such a platform provides defenders with better visibility and enables quicker response time when dealing with alerts. This allows administrators not only to detect misconfigurations and vulnerabilities, but also to collect and analyze the runtime events within cloud environments. A key mission for cloud defenders is to design and deploy a cloud security platform that will improve detection capabilities. It quickly becomes apparent that both cloud posture management and runtime security monitoring must function as a single unit to perform adequate protection from the next phase of threats in cloud environments. During the investigation for this article, we discovered that the average total number of cloud alerts experienced by an organization increased by 388% in 2024.
Some of these high severity alerts could also be triggered by the compromise of exposed or vulnerable serverless or compute instance resources. These types of events can only be leveraged by first disabling cloud storage protections, such as delete protection and automatic backups. These tools can detect and prevent any cloud storage objects from being deleted as a result of a ”protection disabled” event. Table 2 below shows that the remote command-line usage of the serverless IAM tokens is an event that requires real-time log analysis to detect and potentially to prevent. A closer look at the top 10 most frequent daily high severity alerts reveals a high number of alerts pertaining solely to runtime-focused events.
Network and device security reinforces cloud infrastructure and devices against network-level attacks and ensures proper configuration. It ensures proper authentication, authorization, and user management to prevent unauthorized access while providing granular control over who can access specific cloud resources and what actions they can perform. These solutions not only protect sensitive data but also enhance a business’s operational efficiency and competitiveness. There’s no denying the ROI that cloud-based security services can offer businesses, especially at the enterprise level. Organizations and cybersecurity teams also face challenges in delineating where cloud service provider responsibilities end, and their own responsibilities begin—and those gaps can lead to vulnerabilities.
As a result, DoS attacks where the attacker demands a ransom to stop the attack pose a significant threat to an organization’s cloud-based https://getusainvest.com/car-break-in-methods-and-anti-theft-protection-tips.html resources. As a result, organizations’ cloud deployments are a common target of cyberattacks. Additionally, the cloud is used by many different companies, meaning that a successful attack can likely be repeated many times with a high probability of success.
The control plane enables an admin to manage and govern cloud resources, configurations, and access controls. These include DoS, DDoS, account hijacking, phishing, ransomware and other malware attacks, as well as cloud vulnerabilities and insider threats. This shift toward autonomous defense requires moving beyond manual checklists and fragmented alerts.