Digital Brand Protection In An Era Of Cloud Jacking

By Tom Kellermann, Head of Cybersecurity Strategy VMware

In a multi-cloud world, cyberattacks are burgeoning. According to the FBI, cybercrime increased by 300% in 2021. The World Economic Forum stated that cyberattacks are one of the most significant risks posed to corporations in their annual risk index.

Ominously, there has been a dramatic increase in island hopping attacks. These attacks occur when digital transformation efforts are commandeered by cybercriminals, resulting in the infrastructure polluting the consumer. This represents a tremendous risk to targets with decentralized systems protecting high-value assets, including money, intellectual property, and state secrets.

In the soon-to-be released VMware Threat Analysis Unit’s (TAU) Technical Threat Report, Exposing Malware in Linux-based Multi-Cloud Environments, it is evident that cybercrime cartels are attacking cloud environments. Cybercriminal conspiracies are not limited to data theft from cloud environments but often escalate to cloud jacking.

Public and private clouds are high-value targets for cybercriminals because they provide access to critical infrastructure services and substantial computational resources. Cloud infrastructures and data centers host key components, such as email servers and customer databases, that have been the target of high-profile intelligence-gathering breaches.

Once the attackers have obtained a foothold in their target cloud environment, they often look to perform two types of attacks: execute ransomware or deploy cryptomining components.

As attacks on cloud environments surge, cyber vigilance is required. It is imperative that CIOs reduce the attack surface, increase visibility across their environment, and secure workloads against emerging threats. They must operationalize consistent security on workloads running in virtualized, private, and hybrid cloud environments with prioritized vulnerability reporting and workload hardening with prevention, detection, and response capabilities.

Cybercrime has a material impact on businesses, most of which do not plan for the impact of a breach on their brand. Digital brand protection is fundamental to the success of your business. Cybersecurity can no longer be viewed as an expense but rather a business functionality. This is no longer a question of duty of care but rather a duty of loyalty to the digital safety of your customers.

Source: forbes.com