India worst hit by public Cloud security incidents: Survey

Public Cloud security incidents hit India the hardest in the last year with 93 per cent of the country’s organisations experiencing such an issue, said a survey of 26 nations by cybersecurity company Sophos on Monday.

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

Europeans suffered the lowest percentage of security incidents in the Cloud, an indicator that compliance with

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) guidelines are helping to protect organisations from being compromised. India is yet to enforce a data protection law. “Ransomware, not surprisingly, is one of the most widely reported cybercrimes in the public Cloud,” Chester Wisniewski, Principal Research Scientist at Sophos said in a statement.

“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 organisations still don’t understand their responsibility in securing Cloud data and workloads,” Wisniewski said.

“Cloud security is a shared responsibility, and organisations need to carefully manage and monitor Cloud environments in order to stay one step ahead of determined attackers.” Accidental exposure continues to plague organisations, with misconfigurations exploited in 44 per cent of reported attacks on Indian organisations.

Additionally, more than 55 per cent Indian businesses reported that cybercriminals gained access through stolen Cloud provider account credentials, said the report.

Despite this, only 29 per cent said managing access to Cloud accounts is a top area of concern. With 76 per cent organisations using the public Cloud, detection and response is leading Cloud security concern for Indian IT managers while data security remains a top concern globally for businesses.