he quick pivot to the cloud for remote support also ushered in risks.
Business leaned hard into the cloud during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic after widepread work-from-home support became critical. But organizations struggled to migrate to the cloud and properly secure their employees working remotely, according to research released today by Unit 42.
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The biannual “Unit 42 Cloud Threat Report” looks at data from hundreds of cloud accounts around the world between October 2019 and February 2021. It finds that 30% of organizations host sensitive data in the cloud without proper security controls.
“Due in most cases to a simple lack of effective access-control restrictions, these businesses place personally identifiable information and other critical assets at risk,” Unit 42 researchers say in a highlight summary of the findings.
The industries with the highest increases in security incidents were retail, manufacturing, and government, which saw incidents rise 402%, 230%, and 205%, respectively.
The same industries faced the greatest pressures to adapt and scale in the face of the pandemic — retailers for basic necessities, and manufacturing and government for COVID-19 supplies and aid — researchers note.
