Security News > 2022 > January > How safe are cloud applications?

Netskope released a research highlighting the continued growth of malware and other malicious payloads delivered by cloud applications.

The year-over-year analysis identifies the top trends in cloud attacker activities and cloud data risks from 2021 as compared to 2020, and examines changes in the malware landscape throughout 2021, highlighting that attackers are achieving more success delivering malware payloads to their victims and offering advice for improving security posture in 2022.

The research showed that more than two-thirds of malware downloads came from cloud apps in 2021 and identified Google Drive as the app with the most malware downloads, taking the spot from Microsoft OneDrive.

The prevalence of malware delivered by cloud applications Cloud-delivered malware is now more prevalent than web-delivered malware.

In 2021, malware downloads originating from cloud apps increased to 66% of all malware downloads when compared to traditional websites, up from 46% at the beginning of 2020.

"The increasing popularity of cloud apps has given rise to three types of abuse described in this report: attackers trying to gain access to victim cloud apps, attackers abusing cloud apps to deliver malware, and insiders using cloud apps for data exfiltration," said Ray Canzanese, Threat Research Director, Netskope Threat Labs.

News URL

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/01/12/cloud-delivered-malware/