Misconfigured identity and access management (IAM) is much more widespread.

Identity and access are intrinsically connected when providing security to cloud platforms. But security is only effective when environments are properly configured and maintained. In the 2H 2020 edition of the biannual Unit 42 Cloud Threat Report, researchers conducted Red Team exercises, scanned public cloud data and pulled proprietary Palo Alto Networks data to explore the threat landscape of identity and access management (IAM) and identify where organizations can improve their IAM configurations. During a Red Team exercise, Unit 42 researchers were able to discover and leverage IAM misconfigurations to obtain admin access to a customer’s entire Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud environment – a potentially multi-million dollar data breach in the real-world. These examples highlight just how serious the failure to secure IAM can be for an organization. Joining us in this week's Research Saturday to discuss the report for Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 is CSO of Public Cloud, Matt Chiodi. The research can be found here: Highlights from the Unit 42 Cloud Threat Report, 2H 2020