50+ Cloud Security Statistics in 2026

Security is becoming more critical as businesses move to the cloud. Cloud security is a complex attack, and an unfortunate reality is that cyber-attacks are rising. Cloud is not inherently secure and has vulnerabilities like any other IT environment.  How organizations keep up with the latest threats and adapt to evolving trends will depend on their security strategy.

Although the cloud offers increased productivity, flexibility, and reduced operational costs, it can increase exposure to sensitive information if resources are not managed properly.  It’s crucial to ensure you have a robust cloud security platform to keep your organization protected. We have collected the most recent Cloud Security Statistics worldwide and will share the latest figures, so you know how to prepare and devise your cloud security roadmap accordingly.

Top 10 Cloud Security Statistics in 2026

1. There will be over 200 zettabytes of data stored in the cloud by the end of 2026. Remote workers will take an average of 5.8 remote days per month over the regular 2.4 days per month.
2. By the end of 2029, the projected market value for cloud storage will be USD 376.67 billion
3. Cloud security will be a top concern connected to cloud computing solutions for more than 83% of companies worldwide.
4. According to IDC, global spending on cloud services will increase and the market is forecast to achieve a 5-year CAGR of 19.4% from 2026 to 2028. Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence will significantly drive surges in public cloud spending.
5. IBM cloud security statistics studies show that autonomous AI agents will reshape enterprise cloud security risks. We'll see major cloud security incidents where sensitive IP will be compromised by shadow AI systems. Identity solutions will become the next national security priority. There will be a shift towards specialized threat-hunting capabilities and strategic security priorities will be on par with clouds and networks.
6. A company experiences an average downtime of 24 days after a ransomware attack through the cloud, in the United States. 93% of cloud ransomware are windows-based executables.
7. 80% of organizations experienced a cloud security breach in the past year, highlighting ongoing vulnerabilities. Prominent security challenges include government compliance issues, managing software licenses, cloud migration, and centralization risks
8. 45% of data breaches occur in the cloud, with public cloud security incidents averaging $5.17 million per breach in recent years. Common causes feature misconfigurations at 23% of incidents, alongside account compromises and exploited vulnerabilities; these lead to business revenue loss from increased downtime, operational delays, and poor performance.
9. Business financial records, employee records, and business data rank among the most common sensitive information targeted by hackers online.
10. Servers are primary targets in 90% of data breaches, with application servers comprising the majority and cloud-based web application servers most affected.

Learn how you can secure and protect every aspect of your cloud in real time with SentinelOne’s Singularity Cloud Security Platform.

Cloud Misconfigurations Statistics

1. More than 31% of cloud breaches occur due to misconfiguration and manual errors. Public cloud infrastructure remains especially vulnerable, with 27% of businesses reporting security incidents originating from their public cloud environments.
2. Unmonitored cloud assets compound misconfiguration risks; 32% of cloud infrastructure sits idle and untracked, each carrying an average of 115 vulnerabilities. These neglected resources often go unpatched for six months or longer, with many running outdated operating systems.
3. Cloud resource misconfigurations are a top concern for public cloud organizations. Mistakes can happen during the set-up and deployment processes.
4. Top cloud misconfiguration issues in these environments are IAM misconfigurations, insecure API keys, lack of security monitoring, and insecure data backup use.
5. Regarding cloud identity and access management, more than half of global organizations don’t have sufficient restrictions placed on access permissions. Cloud security statistics highlight the lack of visibility into cloud infrastructure assets and resources.
6. According to Fortinet, 69% of professionals face challenges with tool use and visibility. 70% face difficulties with cloud configuration and posture management security.
7. 92% of businesses are already some portion of their IT estate on the cloud. The growing dependency on multi-clouds will intensify security and privacy concerns. 
8. 48% of businesses store both classified data as encrypted and unencrypted on the cloud. Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) culture is another factor that's surging cloud security adoption.
9. Credentials compromise caused more than half of cloud security breaches.
10. The average cost of a cloud security breach is USD 5.1 million per incident.

Top 10 Cloud Security Facts

1. Compromised identities account for over 70% of cloud breaches, and this trend will accelerate as attackers exploit AI to automate credential harvesting and privilege escalation attacks. Identity remains the foundational security layer in cloud environments.
2. Vulnerability distribution shows that 91% of organizations harbor security flaws older than 10 years, while 46% operate with vulnerabilities over 20 years old. These ancient security gaps now provide the easiest entry points for cyberespionage groups and ransomware actors.
3. AI-powered threat detection and automated cloud security validation will no longer be optional. They are becoming mainstream and will keep up with machine-speed attacks. Organizations will switch to an identity-first security model since non-human identities are exploding (e.g. service accounts, API keys, etc).
4. 95% of cloud security failures still stem from misconfigurations due to human error - not inherent platform vulnerabilities. Attackers now use AI to launch automated, large‑scale exploits in cloud environments, operating at speeds that human security teams cannot match manually.
5.  A Cloud Security Alliance survey found that 79% of IT and security professionals feel ill‑equipped to prevent attacks that make use of non‑human identities (e.g., automated bots, API credentials).
6. The 2026 State of Cloud Security Report highlights a growing “complexity gap”: cloud environments have become so intricate that many organizations struggle to maintain consistent visibility and control.
7. Zero‑trust architectures (never trust, always verify) are being widely adopted to secure cloud workloads, replacing traditional perimeter‑based models.
8. Studies indicate that a high percentage of cloud breaches remain unnoticed for months, with dwell times sometimes exceeding 200 days before detection.
9. Despite the rising threat level, many companies do not allocate sufficient budget or resources to cloud‑specific cybersecurity tools, leaving critical gaps.
10. Cloud‑based APIs and interfaces, if not properly secured, are frequently exploited by attackers to gain unauthorized access or exfiltrate data.

10 Cloud Security Challenges Statistics

1. More than 51% of companies plan to increase their cloud security investments to address emerging threats. This spending surge reflects growing recognition that cloud breaches are expensive and preventive security measures offer better ROI than incident response and remediation.
2. Account takeovers rank as the leading security concern for 68% of organizations managing cloud environments. With compromised credentials providing immediate access to sensitive data and production systems, preventing unauthorized account access has become essential.
3. 74% of professionals will be impacted by security skills shortages on the cloud.
4. Phishing is involved in a majority of cloud security attacks.
5. Cloud security breaches have officially surpassed on-premises data breaches.
6. Top companies like LinkedIn, Sina Weibo, Accenture, and Cognyte fail to secure their databases and still experience cloud security issues
7. Malicious actors tend to target user IDs, customer phone numbers, comments, and private information
8. Cloud security statistics reveal that 25% of the world’s total cyber attacks are cloud security attacks
9. Cloud infrastructure attacks are climbing 21% year-over-year. Identity breaches are at the top and misconfigurations are found in nearly 38% of breaches. APIs are the backbone of cloud apps and link to 31% of cloud data breaches.

10 Cloud Security Breaches Statistics

1. Roughly 45% of all data breaches occur in cloud environments, making cloud incidents the dominant breach category. This reflects both increased cloud adoption and the concentration of high-value data in cloud systems without corresponding security maturity.
2. More than 80% of companies experienced at least one cloud security breach in the past year, indicating widespread exposure across organizations of all sizes and industries. The prevalence suggests that some form of cloud incident is now routine rather than exceptional.
3. During the past 18 months, 83% of organizations encountered at least one cloud security breach or incident. This metric reveals sustained attack pressure and demonstrates that single-breach protection is insufficient; continuous defense is now mandatory.
4. The year-over-year surge in significant cloud breaches reached 154%, with 61% of organizations reporting major incidents in 2024 compared to 24% in 2023. This acceleration indicates both increased attack volume and improving attacker techniques specifically targeting cloud infrastructure.
5. Ransomware attacks hit 78% of companies over the past year, with projected growth of 40% by the end of 2026 based on disclosed incidents. Attackers now target cloud backups directly, forcing organizations to develop recovery strategies beyond traditional backup systems.
6. The average cost of a data breach globally stands at $4.44 million, while US organizations face $10.22 million average costs driven by regulatory fines and detection expenses. Breaches spanning multiple cloud environments require an average of 276 days to identify and contain, with healthcare incidents extending to 279 days.
7. Human error drives 88% of all data breaches, with phishing as the most prevalent cloud breach vector affecting 73% of organizations. Attackers exploit user behavior as the fastest path to cloud access because technical defenses can be bypassed but employee judgment cannot be eliminated.
8. Over 70% of cloud breaches originate from compromised identities, establishing identity compromise as the dominant breach vector. Stolen credentials, session hijacking, and credential stuffing attacks consistently outpace other exploitation methods in frequency and impact.
9. Insider threats represent the costliest breach category, averaging $4.92 million, while phishing-related breaches average $4.8 million. Both attack types exploit human vulnerabilities and continue to affect organizations regardless of technical investment.
10. 64% of organizations would rather choose a single-vendor platform that unifies network, cloud, and application security - if they were to start over.

Multi-cloud Security Challenges Statistics

1. 77% of organizations cite identity and access security as the top cloud-native risk. Over 70% of cloud breaches stem from compromised identities, and this trend accelerates as attackers use AI to exploit IAM weaknesses. Multi-cloud environments multiply IAM complexity because each provider (AWS, Azure, GCP) uses different identity models, KMS key hierarchies, and role structures.
2. 69% of organizations report tool sprawl and visibility gaps as the biggest barriers to security effectiveness. Each cloud platform has its own monitoring tools, logs, and dashboards that don't integrate. This creates blind spots where misconfigurations or attacks go undetected, delaying incident response and complicating root cause analysis.
3. Ungoverned AI agents deployed by employees without corporate approval create invisible pipelines for sensitive data leakage. Organizations lack governance models to treat AI agents as distinct digital actors with managed identities. Shadow agents connecting personal AI systems to corporate infrastructure bypass traditional security controls. 
4. Misconfigured storage buckets, exposed management interfaces, and incorrect network controls cause the majority of cloud breaches in high-velocity DevOps environments. Default cloud settings prioritize ease of use over security. Manual configuration changes and lack of Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) enforcement create drift that spreads across multi-cloud setups.
5. Cloud APIs lack proper authentication, rate limiting, and access controls, making them prime targets for attackers. APIs serve as the backbone for application communication across multi-cloud environments, but broken authentication and excessive permissions are commonly exploited. Defenders struggle to monitor API traffic consistently across providers.
6. Malicious actors increasingly target GitHub and development tools—the gift that continues to give for attackers in 2026. Third-party integrations, SaaS vendors, and open-source components introduce indirect risk. A breach in one vendor or integration can compromise your entire multi-cloud environment.
7. Data policy violations associated with generative AI application usage doubled in 2025 and is growing in 2026. Employees use unmanaged personal accounts and shadow AI services, leaking source code, regulated data, and intellectual property. Organizations lack governance to classify and protect sensitive data consistently across clouds.
8. Prompt injection attacks manipulate AI systems to bypass security protocols and follow hidden attacker commands. AI-driven vishing uses voice cloning to create hyperrealistic impersonations of executives. Organizations haven't built AI fluency into their workforce, leaving employees vulnerable to these new attack types. [cloud.google]()
9. Different cloud regions and providers handle encryption, data classification, and backup storage differently. Sensitive data can be tightly encrypted in one environment but left unencrypted in backup storage elsewhere. Compliance violations result when encryption standards don't apply uniformly across multi-cloud setups
10. Organizations need to manage separate security policies, audit trails, and compliance frameworks for each cloud provider, increasing manual overhead. Fragmented logs and varying compliance tools make audit preparation complex. Regulatory requirements, like the EU Data Governance Act, APAC updates, all demand cross-cloud logging and incident reporting discipline that traditional tools cannot deliver.

Cloud Security Audits Statistics

1. 15% of cloud attacks are attributed to failed audits or the absence of extensive and verifiable cloud audit trials.
2. 80% of organizations will face cloud data breaches in 2026 due to identity drifts. Gartner predicts that 99% of cloud security failures will be the customers' fault.
3. 32% of cloud assets will continue to stay unmonitored and each of them will have an average of 115 known vulnerabilities.
4. The global cloud security market will hit USD 67.24 billion in 2026. Spending on cloud security posture management (CSPM) solutions and automated audit tools will go up.
5. We can expect to see some regulatory tightening as well. Frameworks like the PCI DSS v4.x and EU's NIS2 Directive will be enforced by organizations for year-round proof of cloud security.
6. CI/CD pipelines will become the primary attack vector. They will need continuous evaluation instead of periodic testing.
7. We’ll see AI vs AI warfare soon in 2026. Autonomous red teaming will be the best and most proactive defense against AI-driven recon and cloud security threats.
8. North America will hold the largest market share due to high cloud adoption rates and advanced cybersecurity infrastructures. Asia-Pacific will be the biggest region due to the booming digital economy and supportive government initiatives.
9. An average cloud security audit in 2026 will cost around USD 3000 to USD 50,000. The final cost will depend on targets, scope, location, auditor's level of experience, and other factors.
10. Organizations will evaluate data confidentiality, integrity, and availability and develop appropriate controls to reduce cloud audit risks.

Encrypting Data on the Cloud

Over 21% of organizations worldwide have encrypted over 60% of their classified data on the cloud. Cloud encryption converts data from a readable format to complex, undecipherable text. Readers find the information unusable and can’t do anything unless they gain access to encryption keys. Cloud encryption addresses important security issues such as ensuring continuous compliance with regulatory standards, enhanced protection against unauthorized data access, and hidden security threats.

55% of companies already use cloud encryption tools to manage and rotate private keys for enhanced security. Cloud data encryption is applied on the application and infrastructure level and requires ongoing maintenance and support.

It simplifies the security process and means organizations must depend on their vendor to handle encryption keys and protect their data.

The Zero Trust Approach

Zero trust in cloud security follows the rule: “Believe nobody and establish trust based on context. It implements policy checks at every stage of the cloud software development (SDLC) lifecycle and secures all endpoints. It also enforces the principle of least privileged access and strict user authentication to create a simpler and more robust network infrastructure.

The global zero-trust cloud security market is expected to be valued at USD 60 billion by 2027.

Zero trust architecture applies security policies based on context and blocks inappropriate access and lateral movements through environments. Organizations that invest in zero-trust cloud security models save over USD 1 million per incident!

Establishing zero trust security in cloud security posture management requires companies to implement the right blend of network segmentation practices and data workflows and define software-based micro-segmentation. It secures data centers as well as distributed hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

The best way to build zero trust architecture is by evaluating the organization’s business requirements. Companies need to collect enough information about their current security posture and allocate a budget before being able to make effective cloud security decisions.

Conclusion

Cloud Security Statistics show companies should exercise caution when embracing automation and emerging technology trends. Applying continuous security monitoring and network anomaly detection can secure API traffic and remediate issues in real-time. A serious problem with cloud security is that a single data breach can magnify misconfigurations and cause damage to multiple systems. Escalations may occur for unknown vulnerabilities and hidden threats, and situations worsen.

Cloud-based automated continuous integration testing and CI/CD pipeline checks can protect production environments. When images are sourced and come from verified publishers, the risks of vulnerabilities and misconfiguration issues are reduced. Most organizations find that the right answer to improving cloud security is to use a combination of tools and services and not rely on a single solution. Explore SentinelOne’s Singularity Cloud Security platform to see how you can keep your organization secure.