Cloud Security Threat Report 2024
Key Findings
- Cloud misconfigurations involved in 75% of breaches
- Identity and access management weaknesses exploited in 60% of attacks
- Cryptomining and resource abuse attacks increased 45%
- Multi-cloud environments face 2x higher risk
- Serverless and container attacks growing rapidly
Executive Summary
2024 cloud security incidents increased 42% compared to 2023, driven primarily by misconfigurations and identity management weaknesses. Organizations operating multi-cloud environments experienced double the incident rate of single-cloud deployments. Emerging attack vectors including serverless exploitation and container escape techniques grew significantly. Despite improved cloud security tooling, configuration complexity and rapid deployment pace continued enabling security gaps.
Cloud Misconfiguration Incidents
Misconfigurations remained the leading cause of cloud security incidents, involved in 75% of breaches. Public storage buckets, overly permissive security groups, and missing encryption accounted for majority of exposures.
- Public S3/Azure Blob/GCS buckets: 234 major exposures
- Overly permissive security groups: 456 incidents
- Missing encryption at rest: 178 compliance violations
- Default credentials unchanged: 89 compromises
- Excessive IAM permissions: 312 incidents
Identity and Access Management Attacks
IAM weaknesses enabled 60% of cloud compromises. Attackers exploited long-lived credentials, excessive permissions, and lack of MFA to gain unauthorized access.
- Exposed credentials in public repositories: 567 incidents
- Lack of MFA on privileged accounts: 45% of breaches
- Excessive service account permissions exploited
- Cross-account access misconfigured
- Privilege escalation paths undetected
Cryptomining and Resource Abuse
Cryptomining attacks increased 45%, exploiting cloud resources for cryptocurrency mining. Attackers targeted compute instances, serverless functions, and container environments.
- EC2/VM compromise for mining: 2,134 incidents
- Serverless function abuse: 456 cases
- Container breakout for mining: 234 incidents
- Average cost per incident: AUD $48,000
Multi-Cloud Security Challenges
Organizations running AWS, Azure, and GCP experienced 2x incident rate. Inconsistent security policies, limited visibility, and complex identity federation contributed to elevated risk.
- Inconsistent security policies across platforms
- Limited cross-platform visibility
- Identity federation misconfigurations
- Compliance gaps between environments
- Tool sprawl and alert fatigue
Container and Serverless Attacks
Container escape and serverless exploitation techniques evolved rapidly. Attackers targeted vulnerabilities in orchestration platforms, runtime environments, and function configurations.
- Kubernetes vulnerabilities exploited: 189 incidents
- Container escape techniques: 67 confirmed cases
- Serverless function chain attacks: 123 incidents
- Supply chain attacks via container images
Recommendations
- Implement Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) tools
- Enforce infrastructure-as-code for consistent configurations
- Deploy cloud-native application protection platforms (CNAPP)
- Implement least privilege IAM policies with regular reviews
- Enforce MFA universally, especially for privileged accounts
- Deploy runtime protection for containers and serverless
- Maintain comprehensive cloud asset inventory
- Establish cloud security governance framework
- Conduct regular cloud security assessments
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