Palo Alto Networks, a global cybersecurity leader, recently released the Unit 42 Cloud Threat Report, Volume 7. The report analyzes 210,000 cloud accounts, subscription services, and project workloads across all major cloud service providers (CSPS) through a survey of more than 1,300 enterprises to help security leaders and practitioners understand cloud security from multiple perspectives.

The study found that the rate at which businesses go to the cloud shows no signs of slowing down. By 2025, the market is expected to grow from $370 billion in 2021 to $830 billion. Threats often exploit common problems in the cloud, such as misconfiguration, weak credentials, inadequate authentication, unfixed vulnerabilities, malicious OSS resource packs, and more.

Sean Duca, Vice President and Chief Security Officer for APAC and Japan at Pinto Networks, said: "Cloud technology is maturing. But as cloud usage continues to rise, threats have become more sophisticated and powerful, exploiting hidden weaknesses and vulnerabilities. The widespread adoption of cloud object storage services has heightened security tensions in enterprises, making it faster and easier for attackers to break into the shareware supply chain while ambushing large numbers of victims. The cloud provides opportunities for threats - when not managed properly, enterprises are exposed to risk. Therefore, enterprises need to adopt a comprehensive platform strategy to detect and eliminate threats in real time before the cloud environment is compromised."

Some of the report's key findings include:

●Most security alerts are caused by common errors repeated by cloud users.In most enterprise cloud environments, 80% of alerts are triggered by 5% of security rules. A small number of risky behaviors exist in an enterprise's cloud workloads, such as unrestricted firewall policies, exposed databases, and multi-factor authentication (MFA) that is not firmly enforced. Prioritizing fixing these issues can help maximize the return on security investments.

●Security alarms take too long to resolve.It takes an average of 145 hours (six days) for security teams to resolve an alert, leaving plenty of room for potential attackers.

●Sensitive data in the cloud is at risk.6Six percent of buckets and 63 percent of public buckets contain sensitive data that is vulnerable to internal and external threats. Without insight into the information being stored, it becomes difficult to guard against accidental leaks of sensitive data.

●The problem of certificate leakage is widespread, and it is the first of the cloud leaks.Eighty-three percent of enterprises have hard-coded credentials in their source code control management systems, and 85 percent have hard-coded credentials in their virtual machine user data. Credential access remains a common tool for cloud threats.

●MFA is not mandatory for cloud users.76% of enterprises do not enforce MFA for console users, and 58% do not enforce MFA for root/administrator users, leaving console access vulnerable to brute force attacks.

●Attacks on the software supply chain are on the rise。In 2022 alone, more than 7,300 malicious OSS resource packages affecting tech giants and other enterprises were discovered.

●Managing code dependencies is more difficult.51% of the codebase relies on more than 100 open source kits, of which only 23% are imported directly by developers. Non-root data packs introduce vulnerabilities that put the entire cloud infrastructure at risk.

●Unpatched vulnerabilities are easy targets. 63% of production codebase and 11% of public cloud hosts have a critical or critical unpatched vulnerability, which has become a security concern for the entire cloud infrastructure.

Attacks on cloud infrastructure misconfigurations, apis, and software supply chains are proliferating, and organizations need to be prepared for the continued expansion of cloud-native attack surfaces. To strengthen security against these threats, the industry will turn to cloud-native Application Protection Platforms (CNApps), which provide comprehensive protection capabilities for the entire process of application development. Gartner's data proves this - from 2021 to 2022, customer inquiries about CNAPP will increase by 70%.