New Cloud Vulnerability Data Shows Google Cloud Leads In Risk

New investigation shows Google Cloud and smaller providers person nan highest unreality vulnerability rates arsenic compared to AWS and Azure.

A caller study by CyCognito reveals wide differences successful information crossed unreality providers, pinch Google Cloud and respective smaller players showing importantly higher rates of susceptible assets than Amazon Web Services (AWS) aliases Microsoft Azure.

The research, based connected astir 5 cardinal internet-exposed assets, comes astatine a clip erstwhile unreality information is apical of mind for galore organizations. Palo Alto Networks precocious reported a 388% year-over-year spike successful unreality information alerts, driven by nan increasing complexity of multi-cloud environments and nan rising number of exposed online assets.

CyCognito, known for its onslaught aboveground guidance platform, analyzed assets hosted by nan 3 largest unreality platforms including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, on pinch a group of smaller unreality providers and awesome hosting companies. The extremity was to measure which environments are exposing customers to much consequence done vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.

Google Cloud Leads successful Overall Exposure

The study recovered that 38% of Google Cloud-hosted assets had astatine slightest 1 information issue, compared to conscionable 15% for AWS and 27% for Azure. That puts Google Cloud much than doubly arsenic risky arsenic AWS by this measure.

The aforesaid 38% fig besides applied to smaller unreality providers for illustration Oracle Cloud, DigitalOcean, and Linode. Meanwhile, awesome hosting companies for illustration GoDaddy, Hetzner, and DreamHost came successful astatine 33%.

When looking specifically astatine captious issues, defined by a CVSS people of 9.0 aliases higher, Azure showed nan highest complaint among nan large three, astatine 0.07%. AWS and Google Cloud some registered 0.04%.

Though these numbers whitethorn look small, they correspond important vulnerability astatine scale. Across millions of assets, moreover a fraction of a percent tin construe to hundreds of anemic points.

Smaller unreality platforms were much concerning successful this category. Nearly 0.5% of assets hosted by non-major clouds had captious vulnerabilities, a complaint much than 10 times higher than that of AWS aliases Google Cloud. Hosting providers weren’t acold behind, pinch 0.32% of their assets falling into this category.

Easy Targets Still Common

CyCognito besides looked astatine really exploitable these vulnerabilities are, not conscionable really terrible they look connected paper. The institution factored successful threat intelligence and attacker behaviour to measure which issues would beryllium easiest for attackers to exploit.

Here again, smaller providers fared poorly. More than 13% of assets connected smaller clouds had easy exploitable flaws. For hosting providers, nan number was adjacent to 10%.

Among nan large three, Google Cloud again led pinch 5.35% of assets having issues classified arsenic easy to exploit. That’s much than doubly nan complaint of AWS (1.98%) aliases Azure (2.37%).

Image credit: CyCognito

Combined Risk Still Low astatine Major Providers

While each of these consequence types matters connected its own, CyCognito besides measured wherever they overlap assets pinch issues that are some captious and easy to exploit. Less than 0.1% of AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud assets fell into this high-risk category.

But extracurricular nan large players, things were much concerning. Around 0.3% of assets hosted connected smaller clouds and 0.25% of those connected hosting providers were affected by some captious and easy exploitable vulnerabilities. That’s astir 10 times nan complaint seen connected AWS.

What Security Teams Should Do

With much organizations spreading their infrastructure crossed aggregate unreality environments, visibility has go a awesome concern. Assets get forgotten, misconfigured, aliases near retired of soul inventories, creating protector IT that attackers tin find and exploit.

CyCognito recommends organizations spell further than accepted inventory devices and adopt “seedless” find techniques that don’t trust connected soul documentation. It besides urges nan usage of move information testing aft applications are deployed, not conscionable during development.