Cybercrime: Cloud Resources Biggest Targets For Cyberattacks.
“As the cloud attack surface expands, organizations must get a firm grasp on the data they have stored in the cloud, the keys they’re using to encrypt it, and the ability to have complete visibility into who is accessing the data and how it is being used.” – Thales.
Cloud resources have become the biggest targets
The leading targets in the cloud for attacks are all cloud-based:
• 31% prioritized SaaS applications
• 30% prioritized Cloud Storage
• 26% prioritized Cloud Management Infrastructure
2024 Thales Cloud Security Study has identified cloud resources as the “biggest targets” for cyberattacks in India.
Thales has announced the release of the 2024 Thales Cloud Security Study, its annual assessment of the latest cloud security threats, trends and emerging risks based on a survey of nearly 3,000 IT and security professionals across 18 countries in 37 industries, according to a statement.
“The study was based on a global survey of 2,961 respondents, aimed at professionals in security and IT management,” it said.
The study “identifies cloud resources as the biggest targets for cyberattacks in India”.
Cloud security spending now “tops all other security spending categories”, it added.
In India, nearly half (46 per cent) of the respondents reported that all corporate data stored in the cloud is sensitive and 37 per cent of the participating organisations have experienced a cloud data breach in India with 14 per cent having had one in the past year, the statement said.
Also, 35 per cent of the organisations in India recognise the importance of digital sovereignty initiatives as a means of future-proofing their cloud environments, and globally, nearly half of the organisations acknowledge that it is more difficult to manage compliance and privacy in the cloud versus on-premises, it said.
Human error and misconfiguration continue to top the list of root causes of these breaches (34 per cent), followed by exploiting previously unknown vulnerabilities (32 per cent), exploiting known vulnerabilities (21 per cent) and failure to use multi-factor authentication (11 per cent), it said.
“As the use of the cloud continues to be strategically vital to many organisations, cloud resources have become the biggest targets for cyber attacks, with cloud storage (30 per cent), SaaS applications (30 per cent) and Cloud Management Infrastructure (28 per cent) cited as the leading categories of attack in India.
“As a result, protecting cloud environments has risen as the top security priority ahead of all other security disciplines,” the statement said.
The 2024 Thales Cloud Security Study is in its fourth consecutive year of research. This year’s study revisits the latest trends affecting cloud security. With 3,000 respondents from 18 countries across 37 industries, the report reflects the insights of individual contributors and managerial and executive levels within enterprises ranging from $100M USD to +2B USD in annual revenue/turnover.
