Cloud-Conscious Cyber Attacks Spike 110% as Threat Groups Sharpen their Attack Skills

New data shows increased expertise in leveraging and exploiting cloud environments.

CrowdStrike’s 2024 Global Threat Report shows that targeted attacks on cloud environments have increased, signaling that the cybercrime economy has realized the “untapped market” of the cloud environment. 

According to the report, the number of “cloud-conscious” cases (that is, those were the threat actor is intent on gaining access to a cloud environment to take advantage of the access) increased by 110% in the last year. Similarly, the number of “cloud-agnostic” cases (those where gaining access to a cloud environment wasn’t the goal but was still the result) grew by 60%. This had resulted in a massive uptick in cloud-specific cyberattacks.

Source: CrowdStrike

Scattered Spider – the ransomware group behind the attacks on MGM and Caesars in Las Vegas last year – led the charge, representing nearly one-third (29%) of total cases. According to the report, the targeting of Microsoft 365 credentials is a common tactic used to gain initial access, which makes it necessary for organizations to step up their security awareness training game and educate users on the types of phishing attacks used to trick them into giving up credentials. 

Stop the phish, stop the credential theft.  Stop the theft, stop the attack.

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