External attacks on cloud accounts increase by 630% with WFH: McAfee

In a study titled ‘Cloud Adoption & Risk Report – Work-from-Home Edition’, based on anonymized and aggregated data from more than 30 million McAfee MVISION Cloud users worldwide, the firm revealed 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.

PUNE: External cyberattacks on cloud services and collaboration tools like WebEx and Zoom increased by 630% between January and April, cybersecurity firm McAfee said on Wednesday

In a study titled ‘Cloud Adoption & Risk Report – Work-from-Home Edition’, based on anonymized and aggregated data from more than 30 million McAfee MVISION Cloud users worldwide, the firm revealed 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 emphasize the need for new security delivery models in the distributed work-from-home environment of today – and likely the future, the report said.

While overall adoption of cloud services increased by 50%, including industries such as manufacturing and financial services, use of cloud collaboration tools increased by up to 600%.

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, it said.

“We are witnessing an explosive increase in remote working and adoption of collaborative tools across industries in India. We have seen Cloud-native threats multiply seven-fold. Cybercriminals are adept at adjusting their strategies and are now focusing their efforts to exploit the sudden acceleration in cloud adoption.” said Sanjay Manohar, MD of McAfee India.

“In addition, cloud traffic from unmanaged devices and unsecure networks expose businesses to massive risk. Mitigating this risk will require companies to establish an integrated cloud security posture and deploy solutions that have visibility and security controls across every cloud service,” Manohar added.

This data set collected between January and April represents companies across all major industries worldwide, including financial services, healthcare, public sector, education, retail, technology, manufacturing, energy, utilities, legal, real estate, transportation and business services.