/ Real threats, real fixes, no scare tactics.
Quick Verdict: Most cloud breaches do not happen as a result of some ingenious attacks invented by cybercriminals. The actual reason is misconfiguration, stolen credentials or permissions that were never cleaned up. For most teams, the real challenge is not to spot these vulnerabilities, but to deal with the overwhelming amount of alerts and get to the most critical ones. Ownership and visibility fix do more for your security posture than another tool purchase.
Cloud security is the set of solutions and processes that protect cloud infrastructure, data and identities from misconfiguration, penetration or misuse. The concept includes identity management, network configuration, data security and adequate visibility to detect the issues before they become incidents. Here, we focus on cloud security risks and threats, while in the complete cloud security architecture guide we explain how cloud security is done in more detail.
Cloud security risks are all possible ways of exposure or exploitation of a cloud environment – via identity, configuration, infrastructure or process failure. For years now, Gartner has noted that the majority of cloud security failures occur as a result of customer actions, not some fault in the cloud provider infrastructure. There is a crucial difference between the two and the platform itself is rarely the weak link. What decides whether the cloud is secured or not is its configuration, management and visibility.
The threat landscape has evolved. Cyber criminals would rather use a stolen or purchased login than develop some malware, which makes detection of most intrusions impossible in terms of tools that monitor for malware signatures. On the other hand, organizations are increasingly implementing cloud services, AI tools and third party integrations, which means multiple additional points of entry. Visibility and timely reaction now play an important role as much as prevention does.
This is a collection of actual threats, not some generic list compiled for the sake of completeness.
This remains the most common reason for cloud incidents in virtually all industry reports and it is also one of the most preventable if you have a consistent review process and appropriate monitoring tools. Detailed instructions are provided in our cloud security best practices guide.
According to CrowdStrike’s research, valid account abuse accounted for 35% of cloud incidents in H1 2024. Its 2026 Global Threat Report found that 82% of detections in 2025 were malware-free. The datasets cover different periods, but both point to the growing importance of identity-based and malware-free activity. Those numbers show a similar pattern. Attackers use a valid credential for login instead of developing some malicious code and that is very difficult to spot using tools that scan for malware signatures.
When a user or a service account has permissions beyond what its function requires, a compromised credential may lead to significant damage in the case of misconfiguration. Least privilege principles and periodic reviews of permissions are the standard approach for addressing such issues.
Every public API creates a point of entry. Broken authentication and endpoints that leak information are among the most popular types of such APIs, as they are frequently added without proper monitoring.
Everyone imagines this kind of threat in terms of some dissatisfied employee leaking data deliberately. In reality, most insider incidents are not deliberate. For example, when a developer who has access to some storage bucket accidentally exposes it during testing and does not remove the hole for many months. On top of that, cyber criminals also exploit legitimate access to a cloud through a legitimate account.
Publicly exposed storage buckets and databases are probably the most visible cloud security issue, yet the easiest one to prevent. Most default settings tend to be quite liberal and even one mistake may expose an entire dataset. Regular auditing of storage and the monitoring for misconfiguration discussed above help in preventing such breaches.
All of the threats mentioned above are the way the criminals operate. Below are some challenges that hinder the organizations in defending themselves from the threats and have quite different nature and solutions.
The issues with tool sprawl and gaps in visibility are probably the most common obstacles faced by organizations when it comes to cloud security. One of the reasons is that a large number of organizations rely on agent-based tools that are not implemented everywhere due to the incomplete deployment. As a result, some environments can be entirely excluded from the coverage, not because the tool is defective, but because it was not installed there. That happens very often after the acquisition of a subsidiary whose cloud security infrastructure was never integrated with the general security stack of the organization.
Quite a significant percentage of employees use applications that are not approved by the IT department. At the same time, organizations usually have an incomplete knowledge of the prevalence of shadow IT in the company. The 2026 version of the problem is shadow AI, in which employees are free to experiment with AI tools that do not require a formal approval process.
There is a continuous lack of security professionals and especially those with cloud skills, who should understand security aspects of infrastructure, identity, data and applications all at once. Many organizations constantly increase budgets allocated for cloud security while remaining at relatively low level of security maturity which suggests that money is spent on purchasing tools, not hiring the specialists that would maintain them.
Buying additional tools with no staff to manage them will not help. It will only shift the reason for not having proper cloud security from “there is no tool for that” to “we have the tool and nobody knows how to handle it properly.” This is exactly the gap managed cloud security services are intended to cover, performing the tasks of detection, triage and response instead of organizations trying to form a dedicated cloud security team.
This is arguably the most damaging challenge that organizations face in terms of cloud security and probably also one of the most underestimated ones.
| Metric | Finding |
|---|---|
| Alerts generated | 2,992 per day (typical enterprise average) |
| Alerts investigated | 37% |
| Alerts not investigated | 63% |
| False positives | 46% |
| Low-severity alerts later linked to real incidents | 1% |
That last figure should be considered carefully. 1% is a relatively small number, but when multiplied to the annual volume of alerts at a typical enterprise, it represents a considerable number of threats that are not investigated, not because some tool missed them but simply because there was no time.
In addition, let us clarify the connection to the attacks performed by the criminals. MITRE ATT&CK lists T1562 – “Impair Defenses” that include actions by the attacker that disable or obstruct security tooling, like logging disabling or shutting down security software. Alert fatigue is related, but a different phenomenon. Without any deliberate actions, excessive alerts may leave real threats uninvestigated just because of the volume. Either way, the conclusion is the same: a system that generates more signals than the team can investigate is the actual gap in security, no matter if it is exploited by attackers or not.
Detection of cloud security risks before they evolve into incidents is what sets apart proactive teams from reactive ones. A good cloud security assessment should include:
Frequency of this process: Quarterly if your organization belongs to a regulated industry, continuous if you have CSPM (Cloud Security Posture Management ) running and immediately after any major change to your environment, like migration or an acquisition that adds new assets to the list.
| Cloud Security Risk | What It Looks Like | Potential Impact | Recommended Solution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Misconfiguration | Public storage bucket, exposed database | Data exposure | CSPM + configuration review process |
| Compromised credentials | Stolen or purchased login credentials | Account takeover | MFA, privileged access management, IAM monitoring |
| Excessive permissions | Users or services with unneeded access | Privilege escalation | Least-privilege policies, regular IAM reviews |
| Insecure APIs | Weak authentication, excessive data exposure | Data theft | API security controls, authentication review |
| Insider mistakes | Accidental exposure or deletion | Data loss | Access controls, activity monitoring |
| Insecure cloud storage | Publicly exposed buckets or databases | Data breach | Storage audits, default-configuration review |
| Shadow IT / shadow AI | Unapproved cloud or AI tools in use | Data leakage | Discovery tooling, governance policy |
| Poor visibility | Unknown or unmonitored assets | Undetected exposure | Centralized, full-coverage cloud visibility |
| Alert fatigue | Critical alerts buried in noise | Delayed response | Alert prioritization, managed monitoring |
Cloud security posture management is the ongoing process of scanning the cloud for misconfiguration, exposure, improper permissions and compliance violations and notifying the person responsible for the asset. The term was coined by Gartner back in 2019 as the process designed to address their finding that the vast majority of cloud security breaches happen due to customer mistakes, not some provider faults.
There is one clarification to make before we proceed. CSPM is the part of a CNAPP (Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform). In our cloud-native security guide, we provide detailed information about CNAPP. CSPM is not the whole platform.
A properly configured CSPM tool does not just report about the misconfiguration and stops there. Instead, it determines who owns the asset, which application uses it and what compliance framework the finding violates. Without that, a finding is just another item in the queue. That is usually the reason why the implementation of CSPM is stalled not because the tool is inefficient, but because nobody is responsible for resolving the findings.
A manual audit is a snapshot, which is accurate on the date of execution and quickly becomes outdated in the dynamic environment of a cloud. CSPM works continuously, which is important because cloud environments are rarely static for long enough for occasional audit to detect all issues.
CSPM reduces posture and configuration risks, but it cannot replace identity and access management, application security, runtime protection, API security or incident response. It is one of the layers in the bigger stack.
There is no universal answer to this question. It all depends on what resources your organization has.
Cloud security software, that is a platform or point solution that is self-managed, works effectively when the organization already has people who can configure it, fine-tune the alerts and handle the findings. The tool and its results remain in-house.
Managed cloud security services are provided by a third party that configures detection rules, triages the alerts and frequently performs the responses on the client’s behalf. In practice, it provides an opportunity for the team to get access to expertise and constant monitoring that cannot be afforded in-house in terms of costs, especially when it comes to hiring. For a middle-size company in the current market environment, it is a more feasible option.
Organizations that have it all figured out run both: software for continuous scanning and posture management and managed services for the monitoring and response that cannot be handled otherwise.
The most efficient measures are not really glamorous:
Cloud security risk in 2026 is not mainly about smart attackers. It is about the gap between the amount of accounts, alerts, tools, shadow applications and the ability of an organization to see and act on all of that. Closing that gap does not require an enormous security budget. This requires having accountability for each alert, each permission and each assessment finding assigned to a person who is either part of the internal team or is under a managed service provider.
Maverick Carter covers cloud security and cybersecurity at TheTweaks, focusing on threat detection, identity and access management, and the compliance challenges enterprises face as more of their infrastructure shifts to the cloud. He spent seven years in security operations before moving into writing, and still tests tools in real environments rather than trusting spec sheets alone.
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