Page 147 - Cyber Defense eMagazine September 2022

• Surge in utilization of cloud services

According to Cisco, nearly 94% organizations across the world utilize cloud services in one way or the
other. This statistic shows how cloud has emerged as a viable option for organizations from the past few
years. It also highlights that the cloud computing will get even bigger year by year. The data storage on
the cloud is estimated to amount to 100 zettabytes by 2025, according to the article published in
Cybercrime Magazine by the firm Cybersecurity Ventures. The firm also highlighted that this amount will
represent nearly half of the total data generated at that time. With huge amount of data and operations
moving to the cloud, it is obvious that attention of cyber criminals will turn toward exploiting vulnerabilities
and posing different types of threats.

• Replacement of traditional VMs with cloud containers

The replacement of traditional virtual machines (VMs) with cloud containers is one of the major reasons
for surge in cyber-attacks on the cloud. Instead of utilizing in-house physical servers and containers,
many enterprises are choosing cloud servers and containers for carrying out storage, operations, and
other functionalities for saving costs, increasing efficiency, and enabling smooth operations. The speed
and simplicity provided by cloud containers made enterprises prefer them for cloud deployments.
Traditional VMs can be replaced with cloud containers. However, many security lapses can be incurred
during the deployment or replacements. There are high or critical security vulnerabilities in nearly 75% of
images in cloud containers, according to the report by Sysdig. With such huge vulnerabilities, the cyber-
attacks on the cloud are on the rise.

Cyber Defense eMagazine – September 2022 Edition 147
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