6 Cloud Security Trends Reshaping Risk and Resilience Strategies

Originally published by Seiso.

Written by Eric Lansbery, Chief Operating Officer, Seiso.

 

Cloud security isn’t failing—it’s being outpaced. 

Attackers have adapted faster than many security programs have matured. As organizations accelerate cloud architecture adoption, the risks are no longer confined to simple misconfigurations. The real threats lie in the seams between identity systems, legacy integrations, and cloud services that were never designed to work together. 

Here are six trends we believe every cybersecurity leader needs to understand in 2025, along with Seiso’s perspective on how to respond.

Many of the insights below are informed by the Google Cloud Security | Mandiant M-Trends 2025 Report, an annually updated set of insights from real-world breach investigations and adversary behavior.

 

Trend #1: Identity Is Still the Weakest Link

According to the M-Trends 2025 report, most cloud intrusions in 2024 started with: 

• Insecure identity and access configurations 
• On-prem-to-cloud federated identity exposures 
• Gaps in monitoring and response around identity infrastructure 

Even companies with seemingly strong tooling in-place were compromised through overlooked integration points across systems. Traditional endpoint defenses couldn’t catch identity pivots, especially when companies are slow to adopt immutable infrastructure and zero-trust principles, as the tech-debt of outdated tools prevents modernizing protection solutions to support multi-cloud environments. 

 

Our Take: 

Prioritize identity hardening across your cloud and hybrid environments. This includes enforcing MFA, removing legacy trust paths in adopting zero trust principles, isolating admin accounts, and avoiding overly permissive federation. Your cloud is only as secure as your identity architecture and identity management is the new perimeter.

 

Trend #2: The Cloud Attack Surface Is Expanding and Remains Largely Unseen 

Adversaries are actively: 

• Mining public metadata for cloud resource enumeration 
• Targeting service accounts with over-permissioned API access 
• Exploiting lack of segmentation between cloud services and environments 

What’s changing is the creativity and speed of these attacks. Attackers don’t care whether a workload is in IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS—they care that your visibility is low. 

 

Our Take: 

Security teams must see what attackers see. Tools like CSPM and ASM are no longer optional. But tools alone won’t solve the problem—governance, hygiene, and simplification are the multipliers. 
These findings are reinforced by Mandiant’s 2025 report, which highlights the continued exploitation of exposed cloud services, identity seams, and under-monitored assets across cloud environments. 

 

Trend #3: Cloud and On-Prem Are Not Isolated, Representing a Growing Risk 

In 2024, many cloud incidents started with on-prem compromise. One careless sync or integration can open the door to cloud admin access, lateral movement, or data theft. 

 

Our Take: 

Stop thinking of cloud and on-prem as separate. Trust boundaries must be reevaluated. Syncing privileged roles, extending trust across environments, or relying on legacy AD can all introduce silent exposures. Segmentation and architectural clarity are key. 

This observation is supported by Mandiant’s 2025 report, which found that many cloud breaches began with on-prem compromises—often through federated identity or synchronization mechanisms that granted unintended access to cloud resources. 

 

Trend #4: Logging Gaps Are Crippling Response 

In too many breaches, investigators discovered: 

• Critical cloud events were never logged 
• Logs were stored in inaccessible locations 
• Teams didn’t know what they needed until it was too late 

 

Our Take: 

You can’t detect what you don’t log. Prioritize visibility for the cloud actions that matter—data access, identity changes, privilege escalations, and admin activity. And integrate logs into your existing detection and response program. Logging should be designed for humans, not just tools. 

 

Trend #5: The Shared Responsibility Model Is Still Misunderstood 

Security teams continue to overestimate what their cloud providers are responsible for—especially in regulated industries. This gap often shows up during audits or breach investigations, when assumptions break under pressure. 

 

Our Take: 

Treat the shared responsibility model as an architectural document, not a marketing graphic. Understand your actual responsibilities and make sure your cloud security posture aligns with your regulatory obligations. 

 

Trend #6: Scaling Without Losing Sight of Security

Businesses need the flexibility to grow and scale their cloud presence to meet customer demands and generate revenue. This puts the onus on non-security personnel to suddenly take on the task of protecting a company’s greatest asset: their product. This also demands a more streamlined approach to maintaining high levels of trust with customers through industry certifications and attestations. 

 

Our Take: 

Consider your options when selecting and onboarding new tools and services around cloud security posture management. Partner with your privacy and compliance teams to connect the controls to the existing processes and work towards achieving a common front when it comes to monitoring the environment. Lastly, differentiate security event monitoring from configuration guardrails, and enable automation to achieve a continuously compliance mindset. This will ultimately reduce time to manage ongoing regulatory audits, letting you focus on what matters most: the product’s longevity. 

 

Cut Through the Complexity to Secure What Matters 

Too many security teams are trying to bolt new tools onto architectures they don’t fully understand. Meanwhile, attackers are moving faster, smarter, and with better recon than ever before. 

The way forward isn’t more complexity—it’s more clarity, using an approach to cloud security that is grounded in the belief that simplification leads to stronger security. That means: 

• Eliminating unnecessary access and trust relationships 
• Designing architectures that are easy to audit, secure, and operate 
• Using fewer tools with more purpose 
• Prioritizing visibility and readiness over checkbox compliance 

Cloud environments can be secured. But only if you reduce the surface area, streamline the controls, and focus on what truly matters to your business. 

 

---

About the Author

Eric Lansbery is the Chief Operating Officer of Seiso, where he helps organizations turn cybersecurity into a strategic advantage. With decades of experience navigating risk, compliance, and operational complexity, Eric is passionate about building high-impact teams and scalable, resilient security programs.