How the quick shift to the cloud has led to more security risks

The coronavirus pandemic forced many organizations to put their cloud migration projects into overdrive. Such a fast and unexpected transition to the cloud inevitably opened the door to more security threats. A report released Tuesday by Palo Alto Networks threat intelligence team Unit 42 examines how the cloud migration has affected security and what organizations can do to better protect themselves.

Based on internal data, Unit 42’s latest “Cloud Threat Report” found that organizations increased their cloud workloads by more than 20% between December 2019 and June 2020. Along the way, cloud security incidents rose by 188% just in the second quarter of 2020.

Industries that are vital in the effort to combat the pandemic have been hit especially hard. Over last year’s second quarter, cloud security incidents for the retail, manufacturing and government sectors rose by 402%, 230% and 205%, respectively.