Cloud Security Statistics 2026: Breaches, Spending & Trends

82% of data breaches now involve information stored in the cloud, and the average public-cloud breach costs $5.17 million. Cloud is where the data lives, so cloud is where the losses land. This page compiles 66 cloud security statistics for 2026 from IBM, Gartner, CrowdStrike, Thales, Verizon, Red Hat, and other primary sources, covering breach frequency, cost, root causes, spending, multicloud complexity, container security, and the workforce gap.

Cloud Breaches Are Now the Norm

Most organizations have already been breached in the cloud. The question has shifted from whether a cloud incident will happen to how often, and how fast attackers move once inside. For the wider picture across every environment, see our data breach statistics and cybersecurity statistics for 2026.

1. 82% of breaches involved data stored in the cloud, whether public, private, or hybrid (IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2023).
2. 44% of organizations have experienced a cloud data breach (Thales 2024 Cloud Security Study).
3. 31% suffered a cloud data breach within the prior 12 months (Thales 2024).
4. Cloud intrusions rose 75% year over year (CrowdStrike 2024 Global Threat Report).
5. Cloud-conscious attacks, where adversaries deliberately exploit cloud features, increased 110% (CrowdStrike 2024).
6. 40% of breaches involved data spread across multiple environments (IBM Cost of a Data Breach 2024).
7. Breaches took an average of 258 days to identify and contain in 2024, the shortest window in seven years (IBM 2024).

The Cost of a Cloud Breach

Where the data sits changes what a breach costs. Public-cloud and multi-environment breaches sit at the top of the range, and regulated industries pay the most. Organizations handling protected health data on HIPAA cloud hosting face both the highest breach costs and the strictest disclosure rules.

8. The global average cost of a data breach reached $4.88 million in 2024, an all-time high (IBM).
9. Breaches involving public cloud carried the highest average cost at $5.17 million (IBM 2024).
10. Breaches spanning multiple environments cost $5.05 million on average (IBM 2024).
11. The global average breach cost fell to $4.44 million in 2025, the first decline in five years (IBM 2025).
12. US organizations recorded the most expensive breaches, averaging $10.22 million in 2025 (IBM 2025).
13. Healthcare remained the costliest industry for the 14th straight year at $9.77 million per breach (IBM 2024).
14. A cybersecurity skills shortage added $1.76 million to average breach costs (IBM 2024).
15. Breaches involving stolen or compromised credentials took the longest to resolve, averaging 292 days (IBM 2024).
16. Only 12% of breached organizations said they had fully recovered (IBM 2024).

What Causes Cloud Breaches

Cloud breaches rarely come from a provider failure. They come from how the customer configures, permissions, and secures what runs on top. Misconfiguration and identity dominate the root-cause data.

17. Through 2025, 99% of cloud security failures will be the customer's fault, not the provider's (Gartner).
18. Misconfiguration is responsible for about 23% of cloud security incidents (Check Point 2024 Cloud Security Report).
19. 80% of security exposures stem from identity and credential misconfigurations (XM Cyber State of Exposure Management 2024).
20. Compromised credentials were the most common initial breach vector at 16% (IBM 2024).
21. Phishing was the second most common initial vector at 15% and among the costliest (IBM 2024).
22. The human element was a factor in 68% of breaches (Verizon 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report).
23. Exploitation of vulnerabilities as an initial access step grew 180% year over year (Verizon 2024 DBIR).
24. 15% of breaches involved a third party or supply-chain partner (Verizon 2024 DBIR).
25. Identity and access, misconfiguration, and insecure interfaces rank as the top cloud threats (Cloud Security Alliance Top Threats 2024).
26. More than half of organizations rate misconfiguration as their biggest cloud security concern (Check Point 2024).
27. Malicious insiders were the costliest attack vector at $4.99 million per breach (IBM 2024); our insider threat statistics break down the pattern in detail.

Cloud Security Spending & Market Growth

Security budgets are following the data into the cloud. Cloud security is the fastest-growing line item in enterprise security spending, and providers are steering more of that budget toward automation and managed monitoring.

28. Worldwide end-user spending on information security is forecast to reach $212 billion in 2025, up 15% from 2024 (Gartner).
29. Cloud security is the fastest-growing security segment, forecast to expand about 24% (Gartner).
30. End-user spending on cloud security is projected near $8.7 billion in 2025 (Gartner).
31. The cloud security market is projected to grow from $40.7 billion in 2023 to $62.9 billion by 2028 (MarketsandMarkets).
32. Security services remain the largest spending category at roughly $90 billion in 2025 (Gartner).
33. Extensive use of security AI and automation cut average breach costs by $2.2 million (IBM 2024).
34. Organizations deploying security AI and automation extensively shortened breach lifecycles by 98 days (IBM 2024).
35. 51% of organizations plan to increase security investments after a breach (IBM 2023).

Multicloud & Complexity

Almost no enterprise runs on a single cloud. Spreading workloads across providers spreads the attack surface too, and consistent policy enforcement gets harder with every added platform. For the underlying platform split, see our cloud market share breakdown, and for security gaps that open during transitions, our cloud migration statistics.

36. 89% of organizations report a multicloud strategy (Flexera 2024 State of the Cloud Report).
37. 73% use a hybrid cloud combining public and private (Flexera 2024).
38. Organizations run an average of 2.4 public and 2.7 private clouds (Flexera 2024).
39. Managing cloud spend (82%) and security (79%) are the top two cloud challenges (Flexera 2024).
40. On average, 47% of corporate data is stored in the cloud (Thales 2024).
41. Fewer than 10% of enterprises encrypt 80% or more of their cloud data (Thales 2024).
42. Adversary breakout time, from initial cloud access to lateral movement, averaged 62 minutes, with the fastest at 2 minutes 7 seconds (CrowdStrike 2024).
43. The typical enterprise now spans five or more clouds, complicating consistent policy enforcement (Flexera 2024).

Container & Kubernetes Security

As cloud-native adoption grows, containers and Kubernetes become their own security domain. Most teams have already hit an incident, and security concerns routinely slow deployments.

44. 89% of organizations experienced at least one container or Kubernetes security incident in the past 12 months (Red Hat 2024 State of Kubernetes Security).
45. 67% have delayed or slowed application deployment due to a container or Kubernetes security concern (Red Hat 2024).
46. 42% lost revenue or customers as a result of a container or Kubernetes security incident (Red Hat 2024).
47. Misconfiguration is cited among the top Kubernetes security worries by 45% of respondents (Red Hat 2024).
48. Runtime is the phase of the container lifecycle that most concerns respondents, cited by 43% (Red Hat 2024).
49. Vulnerabilities and misconfigurations rank as the two container risks organizations track most closely (Red Hat 2024).
50. By 2027, more than 90% of global organizations will run containerized applications in production, up from 40% in 2021 (Gartner).

The Cloud Security Skills Gap

The talent shortage is the constraint behind many of these numbers. Cloud security tops the list of skills teams cannot hire for, which pushes many organizations toward outsourced monitoring and detection.

51. The global cybersecurity workforce gap reached 4.8 million unfilled roles in 2024, a record high (ISC2 2024 Cybersecurity Workforce Study).
52. The cybersecurity workforce totals 5.5 million, but demand continues to outpace supply (ISC2 2024).
53. Cloud security ranks as the number one skills gap cybersecurity teams report (ISC2 2024).
54. 90% of organizations report a skills gap on their security team (ISC2 2024).
55. 87% of organizations experienced a breach they partly attribute to a cyber skills gap (Fortinet 2024 Cybersecurity Skills Gap Report).
56. 70% of organizations say the skills shortage creates additional cyber risk (Fortinet 2024), which is why many extend their teams with outsourced NOC services for round-the-clock coverage.
57. Managed detection and 24/7 monitoring rank among the fastest-growing security categories (Gartner); partnering with a white label SOC services provider is a common way to close the coverage gap.

Controls That Work

Not every control moves the needle equally. The data points to a short list that consistently lowers breach cost and containment time: automation, tested response plans, secure development, and consolidated cloud-native tooling.

58. An incident response team with a tested plan was among the factors linked to the lowest breach costs (IBM 2024).
59. DevSecOps adoption was a leading cost mitigator, saving an average of $249,000 per breach (IBM 2024).
60. Employee training ranked among the top three factors reducing breach costs (IBM 2024).
61. By 2025, 60% of organizations will adopt cloud-native application protection platforms to consolidate cloud security tooling (Gartner).
62. By 2026, 10% of large enterprises will have a mature, measurable zero-trust program, up from less than 1% in 2023 (Gartner).
63. Cloud security posture management and cloud workload protection rank among the fastest-adopted cloud-native controls (Cloud Security Alliance 2024).
64. By 2027, 75% of employees will acquire, modify, or build technology outside IT's visibility, raising shadow-IT and shadow-AI risk (Gartner).
65. Organizations that adopt security-by-design and shift-left testing report materially lower breach costs (IBM 2024).
66. Extensive use of security AI and automation delivered the single largest cost reduction of any control measured (IBM 2024).

Sources

These statistics are compiled from the following research publications:

• IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report (2023, 2024, 2025)
• Gartner Forecast: Information Security & Risk Management End-User Spending
• CrowdStrike Global Threat Report 2024
• Thales Cloud Security Study 2024
• Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report 2024
• Flexera State of the Cloud Report 2024
• Red Hat State of Kubernetes Security Report 2024
• ISC2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study 2024
• Fortinet 2024 Cybersecurity Skills Gap Report
• XM Cyber State of Exposure Management 2024
• Cloud Security Alliance Top Threats and State of Cloud Security
• Check Point Cloud Security Report 2024
• MarketsandMarkets Cloud Security Market Forecast

Statistics are updated as new data becomes available. Last updated: July 2026.