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Top Threats to Cloud Computing - Deep Dive 2025
Top Threats to Cloud Computing - Deep Dive 2025
Who it's for:
  • Cloud & IT security professionals
  • Compliance & risk professionals
  • Executive management

Top Threats to Cloud Computing - Deep Dive 2025

Release Date: 04/28/2025

This report uses the threats identified in CSA’s Top Threats to Cloud Computing 2024 to reflect on eight recent cybersecurity breaches. Notable incidents covered include the Snowflake data breach (2024), CrowdStrike outage (2024), and Microsoft breach (2024).

The report presents each security incident as both a detailed narrative and a threat model. This includes an attack-style synopsis with the relevant cloud security risks, CCM controls, and mitigations. It also discusses the technical and business impacts of each case, as well as key metrics and takeaways.

Security practitioners should use the insights from these case studies to start their own internal analyses and discussions. They should draw on the recommendations to improve their organization's security and yield faster responses to critical threats.

Key Takeaways:
  • Cloud security must account for human error and persistent threats by implementing continuous auditing and security automation
  • Strong Identity and Access Management (IAM) practices, including MFA and least privilege access control, must be rigorously enforced
  • Cloud providers and users must work together to secure their environments by implementing configuration management and security monitoring
  • Anomaly detection and centralized logging are necessary to identify misconfigurations, unauthorized access, and malicious activities quickly
  • Continuous monitoring of supply chain security is necessary, since threat actors tend to target supply chain risks
  • Proactive cloud governance, such as maintaining secure configuration baselines, reduces long-term risk
  • Traditional incident response plans fail to account for cloud complexity, leading to delayed detection and mitigation
  • Many breaches originate from vulnerabilities in development and testing environments, where security controls are often weaker than in production
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Acknowledgements

Udith Wickramasuriya Headshot Missing
Udith Wickramasuriya

Udith Wickramasuriya

Lakshmi Gudimella
Lakshmi Gudimella
Senior Cybersecurity Manager, Whirlpool Corporation

Lakshmi Gudimella

Senior Cybersecurity Manager, Whirlpool Corporation

Shiva Pati
Shiva Pati
Senior Software Development Engineer

Shiva Pati

Senior Software Development Engineer

Alex Kaluza
Alex Kaluza
Research Analyst, CSA

Alex Kaluza

Research Analyst, CSA

Vic Hargrave
Vic Hargrave
Senior Cyber Analyst/Engineer

Vic Hargrave

Senior Cyber Analyst/Engineer

Vic Hargrave has 20 years of experience in cybersecurity working for Everfox, Forcepoint Federal, Trend Micro, and VMware developing a broad range of security solutions including user-entity behavior analytics, threat management, and content filtering. Vic specializes in behavior analytics and insider threat risk. He has co-authored several publications with the Top Treat Working Group and is active in the CSA AI Technology and Risk Working...

Read more

Jon-Michael Brook
Jon-Michael Brook

Jon-Michael Brook

Jon-Michael C. Brook is a certified, 25-year practitioner of cybersecurity, cloud, and privacy. He is the principal contributor to certification sites for privacy and cloud security, and has published books on privacy. Jon-Michael received numerous awards and recognition during his time with Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Symantec, and Starbucks. He holds patents and trade secrets in intrusion detection, GUI design, and semantic data redaction...

Read more

Michael Roza
Michael Roza
Risk, Audit, Control and Compliance Professional at EVC

Michael Roza

Risk, Audit, Control and Compliance Professional at EVC

Michael Roza is a seasoned risk, audit, control and compliance, and cybersecurity professional with over 20 years of experience across multinational enterprises and startups. As a Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) Research member for over 10 years, he has led and contributed to more than 140 CSA projects spanning Zero Trust, AI, IoT, Top Threats, DecSecOps, Cloud Key Management, Cloud Control Matrix, and many others.

He has co-chaired...

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Alexander Getsin
Alexander Getsin

Alexander Getsin

Alexander Stone Getsin is a financial technologies security leader with particular expertise and interest in cloud security, secure application design, and security governance. Alex is the lead author of industry security best practices, particularly with the Cloud Security Alliance, Top Threats research group, and the (ISC)2 Israeli Chapter, which he helps champion as a co-chairman. Alex leverages a decade of experience in finance, militar...

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Randall Brooks Headshot Missing
Randall Brooks

Randall Brooks

Michael Morgenstern Headshot Missing
Michael Morgenstern

Michael Morgenstern

Mark Szalkiewicz Headshot Missing
Mark Szalkiewicz

Mark Szalkiewicz

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