Netskope, a leader in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), unveiled new research showing that over 400 distinct cloud applications delivered malware in 2022, nearly triple the amount seen in the prior year. Netskope researchers also found that 30% of all cloud malware downloads in 2022 originated from Microsoft OneDrive.
Cloud apps are widely used by businesses, a fact not lost on attackers, which view these apps as an ideal home for hosting malware and causing harm. The Cloud & Threat Report from Netskope Threat Labs examines how these cloud security trends are shifting and advises organizations on how to improve their security posture based on those shifts.
“Attackers are increasingly abusing business-critical cloud apps to deliver malware by bypassing inadequate security controls,” said Ray Canzanese, Threat Research Director, Netskope Threat Labs. “That is why it is imperative that more organizations inspect all HTTP and HTTPS traffic, including traffic for popular cloud apps, both company and personal instances, for malicious content.”
The most significant change in cloud application use in 2022, compared to 2021, was the marked increase in the percentage of users uploading content to the cloud. According to Netskope data, over 25% of users worldwide uploaded documents daily to Microsoft OneDrive, while 7% did so for Google Gmail and 5% for Microsoft Sharepoint. The drastic increase in active cloud users across a record number of cloud applications led to a sizable increase in cloud malware downloads in 2022 from 2021, after remaining close to flat in 2021 compared to 2020.
The correlation between uploads and downloads among the most popular apps is no coincidence. Nearly a third of all cloud malware downloads originated from Microsoft OneDrive, with Weebly and GitHub coming in the next closest among cloud apps at 8.6% and 7.6%, respectively.
Industries have increased their reliance on cloud applications and cloud infrastructure to support business operations over the last several years—a trend further accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic and a worldwide shift toward hybrid work. As a result, cloud-delivered malware is now responsible for a much higher percentage of all malware delivery than ever before, especially in certain geographic regions and industries.
SOURCE: PR Newswire