Security News > 2021 > May > Cloud collaboration software are the new tools of choice for cybercriminals
The latest escalation of the cybersecurity arms race finds threat actors following their targets into the cloud as they start to launch difficult-to-detect attacks by leveraging trusted domains owned by companies like Google and Microsoft.
According to a blog post from cybersecurity software company Proofpoint, cloud collaboration tools like Microsoft 365, Azure, OneDrive, SharePoint, G-Suite and Firebase are being used to launch an increasing number of cyberattacks, and their cloud-hosted nature makes them difficult to detect.
In Q1 of 2021 alone, 7 million messages were sent from Office 365 and a whopping 45 million were sent from Gmail, far exceeding per-quarter attacks launched from Gmail in 2020.
Ninety-five percent of organizations, Proofpoint said, were targeted by cloud compromise attacks in 2020, with half falling victim to one of the attacks.
Thirty percent of those experienced post-attack activity on their network, showing that attackers who gain access "Can leverage credentials to log into systems as imposters, move laterally across multiple cloud services and hybrid environments, and send convincing emails cloaked as a real employee, orchestrating potential financial and data loss."
With attackers using trusted domains to evade email filters, it's essential that security professionals realize that filtering messages isn't the only approach that needs to be taken to protect employees and internal systems.