Google Threat Horizons Report Reveals Imminent Challenges in Cloud Security

Highlights:

• The Threat Horizons report also discusses a new threat: mobile apps that avoid cloud enterprise detection through versioning.
• The research advises businesses to conduct regular analyses of mobile app usage, utilizing machine learning and artificial intelligence to discover aberrant trends.

The Cybersecurity Action Team of Google LLC and Google Cloud revealed a report that provides intelligent insights about cloud organizations’ changing landscape of security risks.

The August 2023 Threat Horizons report outlines different security threats and occurrences, beginning with the discovery that credentials were a factor in more than half of the reported incidents in the first quarter of 2023.

With credentials accounting for over half of all compromises, ongoing vulnerability monitoring of authentication mechanisms is crucial for credential protection. Weak passwords, misused access keys, compromised authentication tokens, and credential misuse are common avenues for unauthentic access that can result in catastrophic security breaches.

The Threat Horizons report also discusses a new challenge: mobile apps that avoid cloud enterprise detection through versioning. Malicious actors can avoid detection techniques based on static identifiers or patterns using alternative mobile app versions. As a result, it is becoming increasingly difficult for security teams to identify malicious applications, thereby exposing an organization’s mobile environment to risk.

According to the report, the approaches used to circumvent protection need security experts to take a more dynamic and proactive approach to mobile app security, as static defenses and standard monitoring strategies no longer function as well as they previously did. The research advises businesses to conduct regular analyses of mobile app usage, utilizing machine learning and artificial intelligence to discover aberrant trends. Companies should also work with app stores and industry stakeholders to exchange intelligence.

The report also addresses a developing concern in the cloud environment: identifying hacked client domains and IP addresses on Google Cloud. According to the research, understanding and recognizing compromised assets is critical in quickly responding to security crises. Organizations can quickly contain and reduce the impact of unwanted domain and IP activity by identifying patterns and signals of such action.

There is also a discussion of issues in the telecommunications business. According to the report, as the industry adopts cloud services, risks from nation-states and cybercriminals will undoubtedly endure, along with the pre-existing systemic cyber threat that can be handled by current cybersecurity measures such as zero trust.

Finally, the research emphasizes the importance of raising knowledge about how source code compromises or leaks might aid cyber threat actors in various exploitation actions. Exposure and exploitation of legitimate credentials and certificates, unauthorized copying and use of leaked software, introducing vulnerabilities, and supply chain breaches are all examples of cyber threat activities.