Surging cloud computing paving way for cyberattacks

- Meteoric rise in Cloud environments in past decade

- Threat actors targeting the cloud

- India recorded 1.92 lakh cyber security incidents in 2022

- Cloud adoption may reach 70% in medium to long term

Bengaluru: Rising adoption of cloud computing among businesses is leading to increased threats of cyber attacks globally. Industry officials are of the opinion that cloud migration will continue to push spend on cybersecurity area northwards.

“Cloud environments have seen a meteoric rise in the past decade. However, threat actors have witnessed these changes and taken to targeting the cloud, knowing that more and more businesses continue to make the transition to hybrid workspaces and cloud technologies,” Diwakar Dayal, MD& Country Manager for SentinelOne India and the SAARC region told Bizz Buzz.

In recent years, attacks on cloud environments have surged as threat actors took advantage of the high volumes of sensitive data flowing between organizations and their cloud service providers, he added.

He further said: “Cryptomining and ransomware are perhaps the most common today, and the most profitable (among the attacks in cloud space).”

Cybersecurity threats are on a rise globally. According to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), the country recorded 1.92 lakh cyber security incidents in 2022 against 48,285 in 2021, up more than three times. During this period, 198 ransomware attacks were observed affecting Indian companies operating in the country in 2022 as compared to 111 the previous year. Moreover, the recent attack on the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) shows the threat level that India faces in the cybersecurity space.

According to experts, factors like weak credentials, misconfiguration, and human errors are responsible for most cybersecurity attacks. Globally, cloud migration is on a rise with many Indian IT services companies bundling various cloud offerings under a single roof. Brokerage firms have pointed out that despite some slowdown post-Covid pandemic, the cloud market is on its early stage of its growth. “Cloud remains in its early innings with around 30 per cent workloads shifted to cloud and expectations are this number to reach 60-70 per cent in the medium to longer term,” ICICI Securities said in a report.

Sources in the know said that Indian IT firms are not only gaining market share as companies migrate to cloud, they are also providing sophisticated cybersecurity offerings bundled within those offerings. “Traditionally, IT firms with good IT infrastructure related offerings have sound cybersecurity practices. So, companies like HCL Tech and Wipro have good practice in the cybersecurity space with a marquee client list,” said a source, who worked with both companies in the IT infrastructure space.

In recent years, attacks on cloud environments have surged as threat actors took advantage of the high volumes of sensitive data flowing between organizations and their cloud service providers. Cryptomining and ransomware are perhaps the most common today, and the most profitable among the attacks in cloud space

- Diwakar Dayal, Country Manager for SentinelOne India, tells Bizz Buzz