Security is becoming more critical as businesses move to the cloud. Cloud security is a complex attack, and an unfortunate reality is that cyber-attacks are rising. Cloud is not inherently secure and has vulnerabilities like any other IT environment.  How organizations keep up with the latest threats and adapt to evolving trends will depend on their security strategy. 

Although the cloud offers increased productivity, flexibility, and reduced operational costs, it can increase exposure to sensitive information if resources are not managed properly.  We have collected the most recent Cloud Security Statistics worldwide and will share the latest figures, so you know how to prepare and devise your cloud security roadmap accordingly.

Table of Contents:

1. Top 10 Cloud Security Statistics in 2024
2. Cloud Misconfigurations Statistics
3. Top 10 Cloud Security Facts
4. 10 Cloud Security Challenges Statistics
5. 10 Cloud Security Breaches Statistics
6. Multi-cloud Security Challenges Statistics
7. Cloud Security Audits Statistics
8. Encrypting Data on the Cloud
9. The Zero Trust Approach
10. Conclusion

Top 10 Cloud Security Statistics in 2024

1. According to Gartner, global spending on public cloud services is expected to grow by 20.7% and reach USD 591.8 billion in 2024. The biggest drivers for this are current inflationary pressures and worldwide macroeconomic conditions. All cloud segments are expected to grow in 2024, and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is forecasted to experience the most growth among them.
2. IBM cloud security statistics studies show that the average total cost of a data breach is USD 4.35 million. More than 51% of global organizations plan to increase cloud security investments, including incident planning, response, and threat detection and response tools.
3. The biggest challenge to cloud security is a lack of cyber security training and awareness in managing cloud security solutions. Organizations face difficulties when staff have sufficient expertise in handling deployments across multi-cloud environments.
4. There has been a 13% increase in ransomware attacks in the last 5 years.
5. Cloud security statistics show that 51% of organizations have reported that phishing is one of the most prevalent attacks launched by malicious actors to steal cloud security credentials. Scammers may also attempt impersonation fraud by posing as authorized individuals and making themselves appear as trustworthy sources.
6. Other prominent security challenges experienced by organizations worldwide are – data governance and compliance issues, managing software licenses, cloud migration and centralization, etc.
7. 80% of companies have encountered an increase in the frequency of cloud attacks. Approximately 33% can be attributed to cloud data breaches, 27% to environment intrusion attacks, 23% to crypto mining, and 15% of attacks comprise failed audits. Businesses lose revenue due to increased downtimes, operational delays, and poor performance.
8. 38% of SaaS applications are targeted by hackers, and cloud-based email servers are attacked as well
9. Servers are the primary targets of 90% of data breaches, and cloud-based web application servers are affected the most.
10. Business financial records, employee records, and business data are the most common types of sensitive information targeted by hackers online.

Cloud Misconfigurations Statistics

1. Almost 23% of cloud security incidents are a result of cloud misconfiguration, and 27% of businesses have encountered security breaches in their public cloud infrastructure.
2. Cloud resource misconfigurations are a top concern for public cloud organizations. Mistakes can happen during the set-up and deployment processes.
3. Top cloud misconfiguration issues in these environments are IAM misconfigurations, insecure API keys, lack of security monitoring, and insecure data backup use.
4. Regarding cloud identity and access management, more than half of global organizations don’t have sufficient restrictions placed on access permissions. Cloud security statistics highlight the lack of visibility into cloud infrastructure assets and resources.
5. 82% of cloud misconfigurations stem from human error and not software defects
6. Social engineering threats on the cloud have doubled since last year.
7. More than 79% of organizations use more than a single cloud provider, and the increasing complexity of multi-cloud environments leads to a rise in cloud misconfigurations.
8. 83% of organizations have expressed concerns about data sovereignty
9. 55% of companies report that data privacy is a challenge when addressing cloud misconfigurations 
10. Cloud security statistics indicate that 89% of businesses impacted by cloud misconfigurations were startups.

Top 10 Cloud Security Facts

1. Organizations do not invest enough in cloud cybersecurity solutions. Misuse of identity and access management keys is one of the top reasons behind cloud account misconfigurations.
2. Insecure cloud-based APIs and interfaces can introduce coding vulnerabilities and lack proper authentication mechanisms. These oversights can enable malicious activities on cloud networks.
3. Secrets management solutions prevent threat actors from overrunning systems or breaching cloud resources. They can streamline their inventory management and enable the rotation of secrets for better data protection.
4. The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is a main target for hackers, and cybercriminals can take advantage of it to determine how to launch new attacks. It is also an additional attack surface vector and can let malicious actors deploy malware and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) threats.
5. Insider threats are an ever-evolving cybersecurity risk, and there is no way of knowing when they can occur. Even the most trusted employees can leak sensitive cloud credentials when leaving the organization and breach trust.
6. Poorly configured backups are the main reason behind insider threats. There is a lack of adequate encryption for both data at rest and in transit.
7. Authenticated cloud users expose storage objects to public access. A schedule must be created to validate cloud resources, periodic auditing, and remediation.
8. Users should block unlimited access to non-HTTPS and HTTP ports. Improperly configured cloud ports can exploit authentication and limit authorized traffic.
9. Enabling legacy controls and exposing etcd (port 2379) for Kubernetes clusters can create overly permissive access permissions across containers, hosts, and virtual machines.
10. Organizations should aim to adopt a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architecture and use Cloud Access Service Brokers (CASBs) to manage excessive permissions.

10 Cloud Security Challenges Statistics

1. Changes in cloud security priorities have resulted in organizations increasingly adopting new cloud security solutions. 82% of organizations say that cloud cost management is one of the top security challenges.
2. 51% of companies plan to increase their investments to mitigate emerging cloud security challenges
3. 13% increase in cloud ransomware in the last five years.
4. 70% of companies say that compliance monitoring is one of their top security priorities for remediating common cloud security challenges
5. Phishing is involved in more than 25% of cloud security attacks.
6. Cloud security breaches have officially surpassed on-premises data breaches.
7. Top companies like LinkedIn, Sina Weibo, Accenture, and Cognyte failed to secure their databases and experienced cloud security issues
8. Malicious actors tend to target user IDs, customer phone numbers, comments, and private information
9. Cloud security statistics reveals that 25% of the world’s total cyber attacks are cloud security attacks
10. 68% of organizations say that cloud account takeovers are one of the biggest security risks

10 Cloud Security Breaches Statistics

1. 45% of data breaches happen on the cloud
2. 82% of organizations report that human error is the cause behind most cloud security breaches
3. 83% of companies said that they experienced a cloud security breach within the last 18 months
4. 80% of organizations have said that they experienced a cloud security breach in the last year
5. 82% of cloud security breaches are attributed to a lack of visibility, especially in hybrid cloud environments
6. Companies believe that cloud security breaches start with unauthorized data access
7. 25% of organizations fear that they have experienced a cloud data breach and aren’t even aware of it
8. Public sector companies and startups were the most affected by last year’s cloud security breaches
9. 58% of developers predict that companies are at an increased risk of cloud security breaches over the next year
10. 31% of companies say that they spend more than USD 50 million per year to secure their cloud infrastructure and prevent data breaches

Multi-cloud Security Challenges Statistics

1. 56% of organizations struggle to protect data in multi-cloud environments properly and do not meet the right regulatory requirements. Consistent data protection is challenging as cloud environments use different security tools and controls.
2. Lack of qualified staff is one of the biggest challenges experienced in multi-cloud security. There is a significant skills shortage, and more than 45% of companies don’t have qualified staff to fill in critical job roles.
3. 69% of organizations have admitted to experiencing difficulties in managing consistent security and data protection across multi-cloud environments due to unforeseen misconfigurations or sensitive data exposure

Cloud Security Audits Statistics

Cloud security audits allow enterprises to assess their current cloud security posture. It also creates an audit trail for cloud systems, identifies potential threats, and verifies whether cloud audit standards meet industry benchmarks. These audits provide multiple benefits to organizations, such as – increased scalability, agility, and flexibility. The cloud comes with built-in security risks, and audits assess the effectiveness of the latest security measures. Organizations can evaluate data confidentiality, integrity, and availability and develop appropriate controls to reduce those risks. The cost of cloud security audits starts at USD 10,000 per year, depending on the organization’s size, data volumes, and number of controls.

Good cloud audits also establish credibility in the industry and improve customer trust. Clients want organizations to conduct regular audits and know that their data is in safe hands. It also prevents malicious actors from taking advantage of hidden exploits and prevents new ones from cropping up.

Encrypting Data on the Cloud

Over 21% of organizations worldwide have encrypted over 60% of their classified data on the cloud. Cloud encryption converts data from a readable format to complex, undecipherable text. Readers find the information unusable and can’t do anything unless they gain access to encryption keys. Cloud encryption addresses important security issues such as ensuring continuous compliance with regulatory standards, enhanced protection against unauthorized data access, and hidden security threats. 

55% of companies already use cloud encryption tools to manage and rotate private keys for enhanced security. Cloud data encryption is applied on the application and infrastructure level and requires ongoing maintenance and support. 

It simplifies the security process and means organizations must depend on their vendor to handle encryption keys and protect their data.

The Zero Trust Approach

Zero trust in cloud security follows the rule: “Believe nobody and establish trust based on context. It implements policy checks at every stage of the cloud software development (SDLC) lifecycle and secures all endpoints. It also enforces the principle of least privileged access and strict user authentication to create a simpler and more robust network infrastructure. 

The global zero-trust cloud security market is expected to be valued at USD 60 billion by 2027.

Zero trust architecture applies security policies based on context and blocks inappropriate access and lateral movements through environments. Organizations that invest in zero-trust cloud security models save over USD 1 million per incident!

Establishing zero trust security in cloud security posture management requires companies to implement the right blend of network segmentation practices and data workflows and define software-based micro-segmentation. It secures data centers as well as distributed hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

The best way to build zero trust architecture is by evaluating the organization’s business requirements. Companies need to collect enough information about their current security posture and allocate a budget before being able to make effective cloud security decisions.

Conclusion

Cloud Security Statistics show companies should exercise caution when embracing automation and emerging technology trends. Applying continuous security monitoring and network anomaly detection can secure API traffic and remediate issues in real-time. A serious problem with cloud security is that a single data breach can magnify misconfigurations and cause damage to multiple systems. Escalations may occur for unknown vulnerabilities and hidden threats, and situations worsen.

Cloud-based automated continuous integration testing and CI/CD pipeline checks can protect production environments. When images are sourced and come from verified publishers, the risks of vulnerabilities and misconfiguration issues are reduced. 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.