Top 10 Cloud Computing Threats
Cloud computing has become the backbone of modern business operations, offering flexibility, scalability, and the ability to reduce infrastructure costs. Global spending on public cloud services is expected to exceed $723 billion in 2025, with the vast majority of enterprises now running workloads across multiple cloud providers. Cloud computing relies on a stable internet connection to access resources and services remotely, enabling users to work with cloud data and applications from anywhere.
The threats facing cloud environments today are far more sophisticated than they were just a few years ago. AI-powered attacks, supply chain compromises, and identity-based intrusions have joined the usual suspects of misconfigurations and data breaches. Organizations now face an average of 1,925 cyberattacks per week, and roughly 45% of all data breaches occur in cloud environments. As organizations move sensitive cloud data to the cloud, the importance of data security and protecting information from breaches and leaks becomes paramount. For business leaders, understanding these risks is no longer optional. It is essential to protecting your organization's data, reputation, and bottom line.
Listed below are the Top 10 Cloud Computing Threats your organization should be aware of heading into 2026.
Introduction to Cloud Computing
Cloud computing has revolutionized the way organizations access, manage, and scale their IT resources. Instead of relying solely on traditional data centers and on-premises infrastructure, businesses now leverage cloud services to access computing power, storage, and applications over the internet. This shift enables companies to accelerate innovation, reduce capital expenditures, and respond quickly to changing business needs.
There are several types of cloud computing deployment models, each offering unique advantages. Public cloud services, provided by industry leaders like Google Cloud and other major cloud providers, deliver scalable resources and flexible pricing to organizations of all sizes. Private cloud environments offer complete control and enhanced security for businesses with strict compliance or data protection requirements. Hybrid cloud models combine public and private clouds, allowing organizations to optimize workloads and maintain business continuity by balancing cost savings with security and performance. Many enterprises also adopt multi-cloud strategies, using multiple cloud service providers to avoid vendor lock-in and increase resilience.
Cloud computing service models further define how organizations consume cloud-based services. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides virtualized computing resources such as servers, storage, and networking. Platform as a Service (PaaS) offers a managed environment for developing and deploying applications, while Software as a Service (SaaS) delivers ready-to-use applications over the internet. These models allow businesses to focus on their core operations while cloud providers manage the underlying infrastructure and supporting systems.
The benefits of cloud computing are clear: on-demand access to scalable resources, improved disaster recovery capabilities, enhanced data analytics, and the ability to support remote workforces. However, as organizations migrate more workloads to the cloud, understanding the associated risks and implementing robust cloud security solutions becomes increasingly important.
1. Cloud Infrastructure Misconfigurations and Human Error
Misconfigurations remain the single most common cause of cloud security incidents, and it is not even close. Research consistently shows that the vast majority of cloud security failures are the customer's fault, not the cloud provider's. Roughly 23% of cloud security incidents stem directly from misconfigurations, including exposed storage buckets, overly permissive access settings, and missing encryption policies. And the root cause behind most of these mistakes? Human error, which is responsible for an estimated 82% of misconfigurations.
What makes this threat so persistent is the complexity of multi-cloud environments. With 79% of organizations now using more than one cloud provider, maintaining consistent security settings across platforms is extremely challenging. A single misconfigured storage bucket or an overlooked default setting can expose sensitive customer records, financial data, or proprietary information to the open internet. Making matters worse, it takes an average of 186 days to identify a misconfiguration-driven breach and another 65 days to contain it, giving attackers ample time to do damage.
Organizations should implement cloud security posture management (CSPM) tools, conduct regular configuration audits, and invest in employee training focused on cloud security fundamentals. Automated monitoring can catch many of the mistakes that human reviewers miss.
2. Identity and Access Management (IAM) Failures
In the cloud, identity is the new perimeter. When attackers compromise a user's credentials or exploit overly permissive access policies, they can move through your environment as if they belong there. Access-related vulnerabilities now account for a staggering 83% of cloud security breaches, and 80% of breaches involve compromised or misused privileged credentials.
The problem is compounded by the explosive growth of non-human identities (NHIs) in cloud environments. Service accounts, API keys, tokens, and automated credentials now outnumber human identities by an estimated 45-to-1, and each one represents a potential entry point. When these machine identities are overly permissive, improperly rotated, or left active after they are no longer needed, attackers can exploit them for privilege escalation and lateral movement without triggering the alarms designed to catch human intruders.
Effective IAM requires enforcing least-privilege access, implementing multi-factor authentication across all accounts, regularly auditing permissions, and using temporary or short-lived credentials wherever possible. Organizations should also implement behavioral analytics to detect unusual access patterns that could signal a compromised account.
3. AI-Powered Attacks and Shadow AI
Artificial intelligence has become a double-edged sword for cloud security. While organizations are racing to deploy AI tools across their operations, attackers are using the same technology to automate vulnerability discovery, generate convincing phishing campaigns, create deepfake audio and video for social engineering, and develop malware variants that evade traditional defenses. According to the World Economic Forum, 47% of organizations now cite AI-powered attacks as a primary security concern.
Just as concerning is the rise of shadow AI, where employees use unauthorized AI tools and services without IT oversight. Nearly half of employees using generative AI platforms in the workplace are doing so through personal accounts their companies do not monitor. This creates blind spots that attackers can exploit. IBM's 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report found that shadow AI breaches cost organizations an average of $670,000 more than traditional incidents, and 97% of AI-related breaches involved systems that lacked proper access controls.
Organizations need formal AI governance policies that define which tools are approved, how they connect to corporate data, and how access is monitored. AI security posture management tools can help detect unauthorized AI deployments and identify vulnerabilities in approved AI systems before attackers do.
4. Supply Chain and Third-Party Risks
Your organization's cloud security is only as strong as the weakest link in your supply chain. Supply chain attacks have doubled in recent years, with roughly 30% of all data breaches now linked to a third-party vendor or partner. Attackers have figured out that compromising a single software supplier, cloud service, or integration platform can give them downstream access to dozens or even hundreds of organizations at once.
The year 2025 saw several high-profile supply chain attacks that demonstrated the scale of this threat. Attackers used stolen OAuth tokens from a trusted third-party chat integration to access Salesforce environments at over 700 organizations. Malicious code was injected into widely used open-source packages and CI/CD pipelines, exposing developer secrets and API keys across thousands of repositories. Nation-state groups increasingly targeted IT supply chains, abusing stolen credentials from identity and cloud management providers to reach downstream customers.
To reduce supply chain risk, organizations should vet all third-party vendors for security posture, require multi-factor authentication for all integrations, limit the scope of API permissions granted to partners, and continuously monitor third-party connections for anomalous activity. Treating every integration as a privileged identity is a smart starting point.
5. Insecure APIs
APIs are the connective tissue of modern cloud computing, enabling data exchange between services, users, and third-party applications. They now handle over 70% of all web traffic. But every API endpoint is also a potential gateway for attackers. Over 57% of organizations have suffered API-related breaches in the past two years, and among those, 73% experienced multiple incidents, which suggests that many existing API defenses simply are not working.
Common API vulnerabilities include broken authentication, excessive data exposure, flawed authorization controls, and improperly configured API gateways. Attackers exploit these weaknesses to bypass traditional protections, steal sensitive data, or execute unauthorized actions within cloud environments. The growing use of generative AI applications, which require extensive API integrations, is expanding this attack surface even further. A majority of organizations now acknowledge that their AI-related API integrations have increased their overall security risk.
Organizations should maintain a complete inventory of all API endpoints, implement strong authentication and authorization for every API, use API gateways with rate limiting and input validation, and conduct regular API security testing. Shadow or undocumented APIs are particularly dangerous because they cannot be secured if they are not known.
6. Ransomware in the Cloud
Ransomware is no longer just a threat to on-premises networks. Attackers have followed the data to the cloud, and cloud-targeting ransomware has become a fast-growing category of attack. In the first quarter of 2025 alone, there were over 2,200 ransomware incidents globally, a 126% surge compared to the same period the previous year. The average cost of a ransomware breach has now reached $5.08 million, according to recent industry research.
Modern ransomware operations have evolved far beyond simple file encryption. Ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) platforms allow less-skilled attackers to launch sophisticated campaigns. Multi-extortion tactics now combine data encryption with data theft and public exposure threats. Attackers use AI and automation to evade endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools, and they deliberately target cloud backup systems to prevent recovery without payment.
Defending against cloud ransomware requires a multi-layered approach. This includes maintaining immutable, offline backups, implementing strong access controls and network segmentation, deploying advanced threat detection tools, and conducting regular incident response exercises. Organizations should also ensure their cloud providers offer ransomware-specific protections and recovery capabilities.
7. Data Loss and Leakage
With sensitive data spread across multiple cloud environments, the risk of data loss and leakage continues to grow. Nearly 47% of all data stored in the cloud is classified as sensitive, yet fewer than 10% of enterprises encrypt more than 80% of that data. This highlights the critical importance of data security in protecting cloud data from unauthorized access and breaches. The average cost of a data breach reached $4.44 million globally in 2025, with U.S. companies facing costs as high as $10.22 million per incident.
Data leakage in cloud environments can happen through accidental exposure of storage buckets, improper sharing settings, inadequate encryption practices, and insufficient data disposal procedures. The ease with which cloud platforms enable sharing and collaboration is a double-edged benefit. A single careless or malicious action, such as sending a link to the wrong recipient or misconfiguring a sharing permission, can expose proprietary information, customer data, or trade secrets to unauthorized parties.
Organizations should classify their data based on sensitivity, apply encryption both in transit and at rest, implement data loss prevention (DLP) tools, and enforce strict sharing and access policies. Regular audits of data storage and sharing configurations across all cloud platforms are essential to catching exposures before attackers do.
8. Account Hijacking and Credential Theft
Phishing remains the most common method for stealing cloud credentials, with 69% of organizations reporting phishing-based identity security incidents in 2024. But attackers have expanded their toolkit well beyond traditional email phishing. Deepfake voice and video impersonation, AI-generated social engineering campaigns, vishing (voice phishing) attacks targeting IT support personnel, and the theft of OAuth tokens and session cookies are all now mainstream attack methods.
One of the defining trends of recent cloud breaches is that attackers are no longer breaking in. They are logging in using legitimate credentials obtained through social engineering, credential stuffing, or supply chain compromises. Once inside, they move laterally through cloud environments using the same access that trusted employees and applications rely on, making detection extremely difficult. Support and admin portals with broad data access are frequent targets precisely because they often run on weaker security controls.
Strong defenses include enforcing multi-factor authentication everywhere, deploying phishing-resistant authentication methods like hardware security keys, monitoring for impossible travel and unusual login patterns, and implementing zero-trust principles that verify every access attempt regardless of source.
9. Lack of Visibility and Monitoring
You cannot protect what you cannot see, and visibility remains one of the biggest gaps in cloud security. An estimated 32% of cloud assets sit unmonitored, each harboring an average of 115 vulnerabilities. The average time to detect a cloud breach is still 277 days, which gives attackers plenty of runway to escalate privileges, move laterally, and exfiltrate data before anyone notices.
The challenge is magnified by multi-cloud complexity and tool sprawl. Organizations manage an average of 17 cloud security tools from five different vendors, creating fragmented data and context gaps that slow incident response. Meanwhile, the dynamic nature of cloud environments means that new workloads, containers, and serverless functions can spin up and disappear in minutes, far too quickly for traditional monitoring approaches to track.
Effective cloud visibility requires centralized logging and monitoring that spans all cloud providers and environments, real-time alerting for anomalous behavior, and integration between cloud security and security operations center (SOC) workflows. Consolidating security tools onto unified platforms can help reduce blind spots and accelerate response times.
10. Regulatory Compliance Challenges
As cloud adoption grows, so does the regulatory landscape governing how data must be protected. Organizations operating in healthcare, finance, government, and other regulated industries must comply with frameworks such as HIPAA, GDPR, PCI-DSS, SOX, and newer requirements like the EU's Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) and NIS2 directive. The Cloud Security Alliance provides industry-standard guidance on cloud security threats and best practices for compliance. Failure to meet these standards can result in significant fines, legal liability, and reputational harm.
The shared responsibility model of cloud computing makes compliance particularly tricky. While cloud providers secure the underlying infrastructure, customers are responsible for properly configuring their environments, managing access controls, and protecting their own data. Many organizations still misunderstand where the provider's responsibility ends and theirs begins, which leads to compliance gaps. Many cloud providers offer specialized compliance tools and documentation to help organizations meet regulatory requirements. In 2025, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued directives specifically requiring federal agencies to secure cloud environments due to widespread misconfigurations exposing sensitive data.
To stay compliant, organizations should conduct regular risk assessments, maintain clear documentation of their cloud security controls, implement automated compliance monitoring, and stay current on evolving regulations that affect their industry and geography. Most cloud providers support a wide range of compliance frameworks and offer resources to assist customers in maintaining regulatory compliance.
Cloud Computing Governance
Effective cloud computing governance is essential for organizations seeking to maximize the benefits of cloud adoption while minimizing risk. Governance in the cloud context refers to the framework of policies, procedures, and controls that guide how cloud resources are used, secured, and managed across the organization. With the rapid expansion of cloud environments and the proliferation of multiple cloud services, establishing strong governance ensures that business objectives, regulatory requirements, and security standards are consistently met.
A comprehensive cloud governance strategy addresses several key areas. First, it defines clear roles and responsibilities for managing cloud resources, including who can provision, configure, and access cloud systems. This is especially important in hybrid cloud and multi-cloud deployments, where different teams may interact with various cloud service providers and deployment models. Governance frameworks also establish guidelines for identity and access management, ensuring that only authorized users and applications can access sensitive data and computing resources.
Risk management is another critical component of cloud governance. Organizations must regularly assess their security posture, monitor for compliance with industry regulations, and implement controls to protect digital assets and data in the cloud. Automated policy enforcement, centralized monitoring, and event management tools help maintain visibility and control across complex cloud infrastructures.
Ultimately, strong cloud governance supports business continuity, accelerates innovation, and enables organizations to confidently leverage cloud computing services. By aligning cloud usage with organizational goals and regulatory requirements, companies can reduce the likelihood of security threats, data breaches, and costly compliance violations.
Disaster Recovery in the Cloud
Disaster recovery (DR) has been transformed by the adoption of cloud computing, offering organizations new levels of resilience and flexibility. Traditional disaster recovery strategies often relied on maintaining secondary physical data centers, which required significant investment in hardware, maintenance, and staffing. Cloud-based disaster recovery solutions, by contrast, leverage the scalable resources and geographic diversity of cloud providers to ensure rapid recovery from outages, cyberattacks, or natural disasters.
With cloud disaster recovery, organizations can replicate critical data and applications to remote servers in multiple cloud environments, enabling quick failover and minimizing downtime. Cloud providers offer infrastructure services that support automated backup, data encryption, and continuous replication, making it easier to meet stringent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs). This approach not only reduces costs but also simplifies testing and validation of disaster recovery plans, ensuring that organizations are prepared for unexpected events.
Hybrid cloud and multi-cloud strategies further enhance disaster recovery capabilities by allowing businesses to combine the strengths of public and private clouds. For example, a hybrid cloud model can keep sensitive workloads in a private cloud while using public cloud resources for backup and failover, providing both security and scalability. Cloud bursting and serverless computing can also be leveraged to dynamically allocate computing capacity during recovery scenarios.
To maximize the effectiveness of cloud-based disaster recovery, organizations should regularly test their DR plans, ensure data protection through robust access management and encryption, and work closely with cloud computing providers to understand the recovery capabilities of their chosen platforms. By integrating disaster recovery into their overall cloud security strategy, businesses can maintain business continuity and protect critical operations against a wide range of threats.
Protecting Your Organization
Cloud computing delivers tremendous business and technical benefits, but the threat landscape has evolved dramatically. The attacks of 2025 made one thing clear: the most dangerous breaches do not always involve sophisticated technical exploits. Many of the most damaging incidents resulted from stolen credentials, misconfigured settings, and trusted integrations that were never properly secured. Organizations that take a proactive approach to cloud security will be far better positioned to realize the benefits of the cloud while managing the risks.
Key steps every organization should take include:
- Conduct regular cloud security audits and risk assessments to identify vulnerabilities and misconfigurations before attackers do.
- Implement a zero-trust security model that verifies every user, device, and connection, regardless of whether they are inside or outside the network.
- Enforce strong identity and access management controls, including multi-factor authentication, least-privilege access, and regular permission reviews.
- Establish formal AI governance policies to manage both the use of AI tools within the organization and the risks that AI-powered attacks present.
- Invest in security education and awareness training that covers current threats such as phishing, social engineering, deepfakes, and shadow AI.
- Maintain comprehensive, tested backup and recovery procedures that account for cloud-specific ransomware tactics.
- Monitor third-party vendors and integrations continuously, not just at onboarding.
Risk assessments help organizations identify, manage, and reduce their cloud computing risks so they can achieve the greatest benefits at the lowest level of risk. IT security audits evaluate your cloud security posture, access controls, and monitoring capabilities to ensure your organization is prepared for today's evolving threat landscape. Formal and documented policies ensure a top-down approach to managing cloud security and service provider risks.
Conclusion
As organizations continue to embrace cloud computing to drive growth and innovation, the importance of robust cloud security, governance, and disaster recovery strategies cannot be overstated. The evolving threat landscape—marked by sophisticated cyberattacks, regulatory pressures, and the complexity of managing multiple cloud environments—demands a proactive and comprehensive approach.
By understanding the top cloud computing threats, implementing strong governance frameworks, and leveraging the disaster recovery capabilities of modern cloud infrastructure, organizations can confidently realize the benefits of cloud adoption. This includes cost savings, scalable resources, enhanced data analytics, and improved business continuity. However, success in the cloud requires ongoing vigilance, regular risk assessments, and a commitment to continuous improvement in security posture.
Partnering with trusted cloud service providers and investing in advanced cloud security solutions will help organizations protect their digital assets, maintain compliance, and ensure that their cloud computing architecture supports both current and future business needs. In the rapidly changing world of cloud computing, staying informed and prepared is the key to unlocking the full potential of the cloud while safeguarding your organization's most valuable resources.