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Cloud security threats are changing quickly, but the available reports do not establish one universal rate at which attacks are increasing. The clearest warning is a shift in how attackers get in and what they target: identity abuse remains central, exploitation of third-party software surged in one provider’s observations, and attackers may try to undermine recovery and forensic evidence. The percentages below describe specific reports and datasets, not the entire cloud industry.
What are the biggest cloud security threats?
For business leaders and security teams, the main risks are connected rather than isolated. A stolen identity can open a path into cloud services; an unpatched application or permissive firewall can expose a workload; and weakly protected backups or logs can make an incident harder to contain and recover from.
- Identity and access abuse: stolen credentials or tokens, excessive permissions, poorly managed non-human identities, and overly trusted federated relationships can let an attacker act as an authorized user or service.
- Exploitation of vulnerable third-party software: attackers may exploit internet-facing applications and other software running in or alongside cloud environments before organizations have patched them.
- Misconfiguration and exposed interfaces: permissive firewall rules or publicly reachable sensitive management interfaces and APIs can create an entry point.
- Social engineering and compromised endpoints: a cloud account can be exposed through deception or through an endpoint already under an attacker’s control.
- Damage to recovery and evidence: attackers may target backups, snapshots, or logs, increasing the impact of an intrusion and complicating investigation.
- Emerging AI-related risks: the Cloud Security Alliance’s 2026 survey placed AI-enhanced attacks and AI system compromise among its cloud-security concerns for the first time.
These are different kinds of evidence. Google Cloud’s report describes observed incidents, while the Cloud Security Alliance’s 2026 report reflects a survey of industry professionals ranking concerns. The latter indicates professional prioritization, not a count of attacks.
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Google Cloud’s H1 2026 Threat Horizons report analyzes observed cloud and SaaS incidents from H2 2025. In that subset, third-party software exploitation became a much larger share of initial-access vectors than it had been in H1 2025. Weak or absent credentials, misconfiguration, and exposed sensitive interfaces represented smaller shares in the later period.
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| Initial-access vector | H1 2025 | H2 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Third-party software exploitation | 2.9% | 44.5% |
| Weak or absent credentials | 47.1% | 27.2% |
| Misconfiguration | 29.4% | 21% |
| Exposed sensitive UI or API | 11.8% | 4.9% |
Google Cloud says these figures come from a subset of observed activity and may not represent all customers. The categories are useful for understanding changes in that dataset, but they should not be read as a forecast for a particular company or as directly comparable with other providers’ statistics.
Why does the shift toward software exploitation matter?
A vulnerability in software exposed to the internet can become urgent before an organization’s usual patch cycle is complete. Google Cloud’s Office of the CISO wrote in its H1 2026 report, discussing H2 2025 observations: “The window between vulnerability disclosure and mass exploitation collapsed by an order of magnitude, from weeks to days.” That statement describes the report’s assessment, not a guaranteed timeline for every vulnerability.
The report recommends targets of under 24 hours for virtual mitigation, such as a web application firewall rule, and under 72 hours for a full patch. Those are Google Cloud’s recommended response targets, not a universal legal or regulatory standard. A temporary mitigation reduces exposure while remediation is underway; it does not replace testing and installing the vendor’s fix.
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Cloud identity is a control plane: a user, service account, token, or federated identity can carry permissions to read data, change infrastructure, or administer services. If attackers gain that access, they may be able to operate through legitimate interfaces and blend into routine activity.
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Google Cloud reported that identity issues were an initial-access factor in 83% of the compromises in its H2 2025 cloud and SaaS incident observations. This is a finding about that observed set, not the probability that any given cloud account will be compromised. The Cloud Security Alliance’s 2026 global survey likewise ranked inadequate identity and access management as the leading cloud threat it assessed. Its concerns include excessive permissions, non-human identities, poorly managed credentials, and federated trust relationships.
Microsoft’s Digital Defense Report 2026 page also emphasizes trusted access and human action. It reports that 78% of observed attack techniques against critical infrastructure used cloud identity abuse; that figure applies to Microsoft’s critical-infrastructure observation set, not to cloud attacks generally. Across these sources, the practical implication is to treat user and machine identities as security-critical assets, not as an account-management afterthought.
How can businesses secure cloud data and workloads?
Prioritize controls that reduce the chance an identity or exposed workload can be abused, and make sure an intrusion can be detected and recovered from. Exact implementation varies by cloud provider, SaaS services, and architecture.
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1. Reduce identity risk
- Remove standing privileges that are not needed, and review permissions for both human users and non-human identities.
- Review credentials, tokens, and federated trust relationships; revoke access that is stale or broader than required.
- Use phishing-resistant authentication for sensitive access. A FIDO2 security key is one possible implementation, but confirm that the provider and account policy support it.
- Require additional authorization for high-impact administrative actions, especially actions that can delete data, snapshots, or recovery copies.
CISA’s July 2025 cloud identity publication discusses identity infrastructure, secrets management, token protection, encryption, access control, and enhanced logging. Its cross-provider recommendations need to be mapped to the organization’s actual identity design and services.
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2. Shorten exposure to software vulnerabilities
- Prioritize internet-facing software and services when assessing newly disclosed vulnerabilities.
- Use a temporary web application firewall mitigation where appropriate while preparing the full patch, then verify that the vulnerable component is remediated.
- Track patch ownership and completion across third-party software, not only infrastructure managed directly by the cloud provider.
3. Limit accidental exposure
- Restrict administrative interfaces and sensitive APIs to authorized networks and identities rather than leaving them broadly reachable.
- Review firewall rules for unnecessary public access and use automated policy guardrails where they fit the environment.
- Monitor for configuration drift so that a later change does not silently undo a safer baseline.
4. Preserve visibility and recovery
- Centralize activity logs and monitor unusual data movement, privilege changes, and destructive administrative actions.
- Retain forensic evidence in a location and configuration that an ordinary compromised administrator cannot casually erase.
- Protect backups and snapshots from the credentials used to administer production systems, and test restoration rather than assuming a backup is usable.
Can ransomware delete cloud backups?
It can, if the attacker gains credentials or permissions capable of deleting or altering the backups or snapshots. Cloud storage does not automatically make a recovery copy independent of the production environment: shared administrative access can leave both exposed to the same compromise.
Reduce that risk by separating backup administration from routine production administration, limiting who can perform destructive actions, requiring additional authorization for high-impact changes, and testing recovery. CISA’s ransomware guidance and Google Cloud’s report both support treating recovery copies as assets that need protection, not as a last-minute response measure.
What should an organization monitor first?
Begin with controls and signals that connect the major attack paths: privileged identity activity, exposure of internet-facing software, configuration changes, and unusual data movement. The goal is not to buy or deploy every category of security tool; it is to establish whether the organization can see and act on risk across its actual cloud and SaaS estate.
- Which human and non-human identities have broad or persistent privileges?
- Can the team identify exposed workloads and assign an owner to patch or mitigate them quickly?
- Are management interfaces and APIs reachable only by intended users and networks?
- Can responders detect suspicious administrative actions and data movement across cloud services?
- Would an attacker using a compromised production credential be able to erase logs or destroy recovery copies?
- Can the organization restore critical services from a tested, protected backup?
Google Cloud’s report interprets declines in observed configuration and identity errors as potentially related to secure-by-default strategies and guardrails. That is the provider’s interpretation of its dataset, not proof that a particular safeguard caused the change or that the same pattern applies everywhere.
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