43.7% of the malware that infected businesses through clouds belonged to the ransomware family. The ransomware viruses use JavaScript exploits, malicious Microsoft office macros, PDF exploits. This was discovered in a study conducted by Netskope.
The Ransomware Threat Has Increased
Since last year, Netskope has noticed more infections trough cloud apps. Corporations have started to use them more, 977 this quarter compared to the last’s 935. The report confirms what’s already common knowledge – ransomware spread is very effective, and both users and employees of large organizations should be more knowledgeable for its prevention.
Ransomware is often distributed using phishing schemes and email attacks. Most ransomware infections can be easily prevented by not opening an infected email message. The cloud technology also makes it easier for ransomware to spread by being uploaded inside a sync folder. That makes it a hub from which the virus can access all computers within the particular cloud network. According to the report, 55.9% of infected files get shared with other internal or external users.
The Popularity of Cloud Apps in Business
The study puts the number of apps per enterprise at 977. The percentage of these apps that aren’t enterprise ready is 94.7%. Financial Services, Banking, and Insurance companies are the biggest users of these apps. Microsoft is the biggest developer that’s on the most popular app list. Netskope’s top 20 app list has six entries for Microsoft products.
The report states:
“Besides visibility and control of sensitive data within high-profile apps, security teams will need to note what ecosystem apps are integrated and sharing data with those popular apps, and place the appropriate access and data controls in them as well, so sensitive data are not leaked via an app’s ecosystem.”
Even though these apps aren’t made to be malicious, their safety is very questionable in the corporate environment. The apps can be used to violate the security of companies. As we’ve already said, cloud-based apps are very useful for malware spreading.
Picture From Netskope:
Dangerous Clouds
Clouds are very useful for corporate use. Data needs to flow to many places at once, and cloud technology is the fastest way to do that. However, as the new study shows, that can be very risky for everyone, not just businesses. Data from 68 Million Dropbox Accounts was stolen in a recently uncovered hack. Cloud services are far from perfect when it comes to security, since everything on the cloud is available from anywhere if you can gain access. Some people call confidential cloud files as publicly broadcast secret. It’s not far from the truth.
Perhaps the most famous case of public leakage of Cloud data was the hacking of the iCloud service crudely dubbed “The Fappening”. In it, the cloud accounts of a few celebrities were hacked. The hackers gained access to nude pictures the celebs had on their cloud profiles. People who aren’t celebrities should also be careful what they put in the cloud, as pretty much all personal information can be useful to cybercriminals. Criminals are always looking for personal information to collect and sale, so take care not to give it to them.
