By – Pavan Kushwaha, Founder & CEO, Threatcop & Kratikal
Cloud use has expanded at a pace that few organisations were ready for. Most critical functions now run on cloud platforms. Customer touchpoints, internal systems, analytics, product operations, all of it. The shift has brought efficiency. It has also brought exposure. Cloud incidents rose by 61 per cent in the past year. Nearly two-thirds of organisations dealt with at least one issue. For many leadership teams, cloud security has become the most difficult part of modernisation.
Misconfigurations Continue to Slip Through
Even experienced teams struggle with misconfigurations. Industry findings through 2025 show that a large share of cloud failures still start inside the organisation. Settings drift. Access rules change. Databases move. And the gaps go unnoticed. As environments scale across containers, virtual machines, serverless workloads and multiple cloud providers, manual oversight becomes nearly impossible. A single unchecked permission or exposed storage bucket is often all it takes to create a large-scale breach.
One global automotive company faced a leak involving several terabytes of customer information after its cloud storage setup no longer matched what teams assumed it was. A network services provider had a similar experience. A researcher found that a cloud database holding more than 380 million records had become visible externally. Their own tools did not catch it. In many such cases, security teams had policies in place, but the enforcement drifted as environments evolved faster than governance controls.
These issues rarely appear suddenly. They grow over time. Regular reviews, automated checks and steady monitoring remain the simplest way to keep environments from drifting into risk. For leadership, the challenge is not just technical; it is ensuring that cloud deployment speed never outpaces security validation.
Identity Is Still the Weakest Link
Most cloud breaches now involve stolen or misused credentials. Attackers prefer valid access because it lets them blend into normal behaviour. Several incidents from the past year show how serious this has become.
The Codefinger ransomware group entered multiple cloud environments using compromised keys. They eventually locked organisations out of their own data. Another breach affected more than 160 companies after attackers used credentials stolen through infostealer malware. Losses crossed two million dollars. One of the accounts involved did not have multi-factor authentication.
Identity governance needs more discipline. Limited access. Regular key rotation. Behaviour monitoring. Zero trust is used in practice, not only in strategy documents.
Shadow IT Keeps Growing in the Background
Shadow IT often expands without leadership noticing. Surveys show that organisations use well over a thousand cloud applications on average. IT teams recognise only a small fraction of them.
This hidden footprint has already created real problems. IBM found that one-third of breaches in 2024 involved shadow IT. A Forbes survey reported that more than 20 per cent of companies had an incident linked to an unapproved tool. Most cases begin with everyday shortcuts—saving files in a personal cloud drive or trying a new SaaS service. These tools often lack proper configuration, encryption or access controls, making them easy entry points.
Visibility matters. Organisations need a clear picture of what tools people actually use, not what is listed officially. Practical policies and regular awareness help close the gap.
Compliance Pressure Is Increasing Everywhere
Cloud-hosted data faces more regulatory scrutiny than ever. Forty-two per cent of enterprises list cloud data security and privacy as one of their top challenges. Recent cases show why.
The 1.2 billion euro GDPR penalty against Meta reminded organisations that cross-border data handling is now tightly enforced. In the United States, another firm faced a three-million-dollar penalty for inaccurate breach disclosures. Multi-cloud setups complicate this even further. Data moves across regions. Regulations differ. Misconfigured retention policies, logging failures and unclear data residency controls now directly translate into legal and financial exposure.
Clear logs. Reliable encryption. Strong documentation. And a clear understanding of who is responsible for what. These are becoming the minimum standard.
Insider Threats Create Damage That Lasts
Insider-driven breaches continue to carry heavy consequences. IBM reports that malicious insider incidents this year cost organisations close to five million dollars on average.
A cryptocurrency exchange discovered this when outsourced support staff quietly extracted data belonging to 69,000 customers. The issue surfaced only after a 20-million-dollar extortion attempt. Another case involved former employees of a major electric vehicle company who leaked more than 100 gigabytes of internal data affecting over 75,000 people. In cloud environments, where access is often broad and poorly segregated, insiders can do far more damage in far less time.
Stronger access governance, careful offboarding and steady behaviour monitoring can limit such damage.
APIs Are Becoming a Direct Entry Point
APIs sit at the centre of cloud environments. When they are not secured well, the exposure is immediate. Poor authentication settings, overly permissive tokens and misconfigured gateways frequently leave sensitive data exposed to anyone who knows where to look.
A collaboration platform learned this when an unauthenticated API endpoint was used to gather email addresses of more than 15 million users. A telecom provider had a similar issue involving 37 million customer records.
Authentication. Validation. Rate controls. Constant traffic checks. These are essential for API security.
Third-Party Weaknesses Spread Quickly
Nineteen per cent of breaches now originate from third-party or supply-chain issues. Organisations rely on external vendors and open-source software. One flaw can travel quickly.
The 2023 and 2024 file transfer software breaches made this clear. A single zero-day vulnerability affected hundreds of organisations simply because they depended on a payroll provider using the tool.
Vendor assessments and dependency tracking reduce this risk.
Entering 2026 with Sharper Focus
Cloud risks are connected and move fast. Misconfigurations expose identities. Weak identities enable API abuse. Shadow IT multiplies compliance failures. Leadership teams that prioritise visibility, discipline and consistent controls will step into 2026 stronger and more prepared for what comes next.