Rise in cyberattacks targeting the cloud as use of collaboration tools increase

Rise in cyberattacks targeting the cloud as use of collaboration tools increase

There is a rise in cyberattacks targeting the cloud as the use of cloud services and collaboration tools increases, according to new research from McAfee. 


The cybersecurity firm this week released its Cloud Adoption & Risk Report – Work-from-Home Edition, which has uncovered a correlation between the increased use of cloud services and collaboration tools, such as Cisco WebEx, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Slack during the COVID-19 pandemic, along with an increase in cyber-attacks targeting the cloud. 


Based on anonymised and aggregated data from more than 30 million McAfee MVISION Cloud users worldwide between January and April, the report reveals significant and potentially long-lasting trends that include an increase in the use of cloud services, access from unmanaged devices and the rise of cloud-native threats. These trends emphasise the need for new security delivery models in the distributed work-from-home environment of today–and likely the future.  


 In the time surveyed, overall enterprise adoption of cloud services spiked by 50%, including industries such as manufacturing and financial services that typically rely on legacy on-premises applications, networking and security more than others. Use of cloud collaboration tools increased by up to 600 percent, with the education sector seeing the most growth as more students are required to adopt distance learning practices.  


Threat events from external actors increased by 630% over the same period. Most of these external attacks targeted collaboration services like Microsoft 365, and were large-scale attempts to access cloud accounts with stolen credentials. Insider threats remained the same, indicating that working from home has not negatively influenced employee loyalty. Access to the cloud by unmanaged, personal devices doubled, adding another layer of risk for security professionals working to keep their data secure in the cloud.  


“While we are seeing a tremendous amount of courage and global goodwill to ..

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