Indian Organizations Suffer the Most in Public Cloud Security Incidents

In a survey of 26 countries for public Cloud security incidents, India emerges as the nation which endured the hardest hits the previous year with 93 percent of the nation’s organizations encountering the problem.

The survey included more than 3,500 IT managers across 26 nations in Europe, the Americas, Asia Pacific, the Center East, and Africa that currently host data and workloads at hand in the Public Cloud.

The cybersecurity incidents that Indian organizations suffered most included ransomware (53 percent) and other malware (49 percent), exposed data (49 percent), compromised accounts (48 percent), and cryptojacking (36 percent), said the report titled “The State of Cloud Security 2020” by cybersecurity company Sophos.

While Europeans seem to have endured the least level of security incidents in the Cloud, an indicator that compliance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) guidelines are assisting with protecting organizations from being undermined.

However, India still hasn’t enforced a data protection law.

Chester Wisniewski, Principal Research Scientist at Sophos said in a statement, “Ransomware, not surprisingly, is one of the most widely reported cybercrimes in the public Cloud.”

 “The recent increase in remote working provides extra motivation to disable Cloud infrastructure that is being relied on more than ever, so it’s worrisome that many organizations still don’t understand their responsibility in securing Cloud data and workloads,” Wisniewski added later.

“Cloud security is a shared responsibility, and organizations need to carefully manage and monitor Cloud environments in order to stay one step ahead of determined attackers.”

According to the report, more than 55 percent of Indian organizations and businesses revealed that cybercriminals obtained access through the stolen Cloud provider account credentials.

Regardless of this, only 29 percent said managing access to Cloud accounts is a top area of concern. Albeit ‘accidental exposure’ keeps on plaguing organizations, with misconfigurations exploited in 44 percent of reported attacks on Indian organizations.

With 76 percent of organizations utilizing the Public Cloud, detection and response are driving the Cloud security concern for IT managers in India while data security still stays as a top concern across the world for organizations.