The cloud may not be as secure as it was previously touted to be, according to a Palo Alto Networks report reviewed by The Hill.
Palo Alto Networks' threat intelligence team found that 29 percent of the vendors it works with had potential account compromises in their cloud services, according to the publication. Moreover, 32 percent of the vendors' networks were set up in a way that publicly exposed at least one cloud storage system.
Many vendors weren't using best practices to protect their clouds, the network's team found. In fact, 23 percent of companies lacked critical patches for their clouds that could stop hackers from accessing sensitive information.
"Malicious actors can use this data to perform traditional identity theft and fraud, and it can also serve as ammunition for social engineering scams, such as phishing," the researchers wrote.