Is Your Cloud Secure for the New Year?
Chances are that your business has migrated some of its applications, services and assets to the cloud in recent years. If so, your transition is one of many that is part of the great migration wave to the cloud. By 2027 more than 70% of enterprises will use industry cloud platforms to grow their businesses, based on a Gartner study, which is a significant growth compared to 15% in 2023.
What are Some Recent Cloud Security Gaps?
The cloud operates differently than a traditional on-premises infrastructure, so it has a different management approach. With cloud adoption accelerating across every industry, this shift has created a pronounced cloud skills gap in 2025. According to the IDC, 90% of organizations will face critical IT skills shortages by 2026, as demand outpaces the availability of professionals proficient in cloud-native technologies.
The truth is that cloud adoption often outpaces cloud strategy and that imbalance creates confusion, misconfigurations, and risk exposure. 90% of the organizations that fail to manage the use of public cloud will inadvertently share sensitive data in 2025. The problem is compounded by the shared responsibility model in which cloud providers secure the infrastructure, but customers are responsible for their configurations, data, and access controls. Customers remain confused as to what their responsibilities are, as 90% of cloud security failures will be the customer’s fault. As cloud usage continually surges, security incidents increase. A 2025 Check Point report, reflected 65% of organizations had a cloud-related security incident in the past year. This is a big increase from 61% the previous year.
Identify Gaps with a Cloud Security Assessment
A Cloud Security Assessment (CSA) identifies, quantifies, and prioritizes risks in your cloud ecosystem. This can also cover related infrastructure misconfigurations, privilege abuse, IAM issues and exposed inactive services. Some of the benefits of a CSA include:
- Identify vulnerabilities in cloud configurations, applications and infrastructure before malicious actors do
- Identify configuration issues in IAM, storage, networking and encryption
- Provide findings ratings to prioritize what to fix first
- Evaluate behaviors to determine if accounts may be overprivileged or misused.
- Provide remediation guidance to assist with the resolution of identified issues.
The results from a CSA will enable you to:
- Stay ahead of quickly evolving cyber threats and ensure your security measures are prepared to protect against new attack vectors
- Prioritize security budget since it pinpoints where your security spending is most necessary
- Evidence security commitments to calm clients and stakeholders that their data is protected
While frameworks such as PCI DSS, CCPA and HIPAA don’t explicitly call out annual cloud security assessments, they do require organizations to perform risk assessments, testing and monitoring of security controls on an ongoing basis to ensure they continue to be effective. While this is traditionally a risk assessment designed for on-prem infrastructure, a CSA is risk assessment that looks at your cloud environment.
What are some 2025 Cloud Incidents that were Preventable by Annual CSAs?
A comprehensive cloud security assessment can easily be conducted by an experienced outside team with no impact on the workload of your internal staff. Some of the biggest security incidents of 2025 could have been prevented by a CSA.
- In reference to the 2025 Ticketmaster breach that exposed data tied to over 40 million user records, a CSA would have identified that the connected third-party database lacked least-privilege access, and likely contained overly broad permissions
- The exploitation of a McDonald’s chatbot that exposed the job applications of more than 64 million applicants could have been prevented by a CSA that would have flagged the use of weak credentials and a dormant test account.
- The Change Healthcare cloud breach that impacted nearly 200 million individuals and disrupted billing and pharmacy systems nationwide may have been prevented by a CSA that would have identified cloud misconfigurations, the absence of MFA and unpatched systems and legacy software.
Limited Special: Cloud Security Bundle
Start 2026 off Right
A HALOCK Security Labs cloud security assessment analyzes for vulnerabilities in your cloud environment before attackers can exploit them. You’ll receive actionable recommendations to fix critical issues and a clear summary report that helps leadership understand threats, prioritize responses, and allocate budget effectively. Don’t let the coming year get away from you.
Contact HALOCK to schedule a cloud security assessment tailored to your organization’s environment.
