Cloud adoption has changed how organizations store data, build applications, work, and deliver services to their customers. It offers scalability, agility, and improved cost benefits. However, these benefits come with a significant challenge: security.
Famous Cloud Breaches
Misconfigurations & Exposed Data
- Capital One (2019): AWS misconfiguration exploited via SSRF, attacker gained access to S3 buckets. More than 100M customer records leaked.
- Accenture (2019 & 2021): Left AWS S3 buckets unsecured multiple times. Exposed internal credentials, customer data, and critical business information.
- Verizon (2017): 14M customer records were exposed due to a misconfigured AWS S3 bucket by third-party vendor NICE Systems.
- FedEx (2018): Exposed 119K scanned documents, including passports and driver’s licenses, via unsecure S3 storage.
- Facebook / Cultura Colectiva (2019): Hundreds of millions of Facebook user records found exposed on unsecured AWS cloud servers.
Supply Chain & third-Party Cloud Risks
- Code Spaces (2014): AWS console compromised, and attacker deleted almost all customer data and backups. The company shut down soon after.
- Parler (2021): Before being deplatformed, researchers scraped and archived massive amounts of Parler data due to poor cloud security practices.
- Autoclerk (2019): U.S. Department of Defense travel records exposed via an insecure cloud-based booking system.
Cloud Provider & SaaS Breaches
- Dropbox (2012, disclosed 2016): Hackers stole credentials of over 68M users. Attackers exploited reused passwords to access employee accounts.
- iCloud / Apple (2014 “Celebgate” aka. The Fappening): Attackers used password reuse & weak security questions (not a direct iCloud hack, but a cloud account compromise). Attackers gained access to private photographs of celebrities, leaking them online.
- Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB (ChaosDB 2021): A vulnerability in the Jupyter Notebook feature allowed cross-tenant data access to Azure Cosmos DB.
- Nissan North America (2021): Source code was exposed after a misconfigured Git repository hosted on cloud infrastructure was left public.
- Toyota (2019 – 2023): Multiple incidents involving exposed cloud environments have led to leaks of customer information, including telematics data.
Lessons Learned
- Misconfigured cloud storage (S3, Azure Blob, GCP buckets) is still the #1 cause.
- The shared responsibility model is often misunderstood (e.g., Capital One: AWS infrastructure was secure, but the customer’s misconfiguration caused the breach).
- Third-Party SaaS and supply chain dependencies expand the attack surface.
- Privilege escalation or poor IAM controls in cloud environments led to massive data exposure.
Why Cloud Security Matters
As enterprises move more workloads to the cloud, their attack surface grows. Data breaches, misconfigurations, unauthorized access, and compliance failures are top risks. Industry reports show misconfigured cloud environments are a leading cause of breaches. Even the most advanced cloud platforms need proactive security measures.
Some key challenges organizations face include:
- Visibility Gaps: Multi-cloud environments can make it difficult to see who is accessing what.
- Shared Responsibility Model: While cloud providers secure the infrastructure, organizations must secure their data, identities, and applications.
- Identity and Access Management (IAM): Mismanagement of identities and privileges can expose sensitive data.
- Compliance and Governance: Regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and ISO standards demand strict controls over cloud-hosted data.
- Threat Evolution: Attackers are constantly refining tactics to exploit cloud weaknesses, from credential stuffing to API abuse.
Without a robust cloud security strategy, business risk financial loss, reputation damage, and regulatory penalties that far exceed the cost any investments in security.
How Curios Can Help
At Curios, we know securing the cloud takes more than checklist, tools, and dedicated teams. It requires clarity, visibility, and actionable intelligence. Our approach lets organizations confidently adopt cloud technologies while reducing risk.
Here’s how Curios supports your cloud security journey:
- Continuous Monitoring & Visibility: Curios provides deep insight into your cloud environments, whether AWS, Azure, GCP, or hybrid setups. With real-time monitoring, we help detect misconfigurations, unauthorized access, and unusual activity before they become breaches.
- Identify & Access Governance: We ensure the right people have the right access at the right time. Curios automates least-privilege enforcement, highlights excessive permissions, and helps remediate IAM risks.
- Compliance Made Simple: Staying compliant does not need to be a burden. Curios maps your cloud posture to industry regulations and best practices, generating clear reports that help satisfy auditors and stakeholders.
- Threat Detection & Response: Our platform uses intelligent detection to identify anomalies and suspicious behavior, ensuring threats are detected quickly and acted on with guided response workflows.
- Holistic Security Posture Management: With Curios, you gain a centralized view of risks across all your cloud assets. From containers and workloads to data storage and APIs, we help you strengthen your overall cloud security posture.
The Curios Advantage
What sets Curios apart is our focus on empowering security teams. We don’t just alert you to problems – we give you the context and tools needed to resolve them quickly. By combining automation with expert-driven insights, Curios helps organizations achieve:
- Reduced risk of data breaches.
- Faster detection and remediation of threats.
- Stronger compliance posture.
- Confidence in scaling cloud adoption securely.
Final Thoughts
Cloud security is not optional – it’s essential. As organizations continue to expand their digital presence, ensuring security, compliance, and resilience in the cloud will determine long-term success.
We, at Curios, strive to be your partner in this journey. Contact us today to start securing your cloud transformation with confidence.