Industry, online presence determine the risk of being attacked by fraudsters

According to the 2015 Cloud Security Report, an online retailer or financial services company will more likely face attacks on its external web apps with customer credit card information as the target, whereas an oil company or a manufacturer with minimal online presence can expect to deal with more traditional hacking methods focused on proprietary data.

The same source unveils a rise in cyberattacks on cloud environments due to the popularity of public cloud solutions. Alert Logic reports that hackers view cloud targets as easier prey and the authors believe that to a certain extent, the hackers are correct. Results show that cyber attacks on cloud environments have increased significantly in 2014, while the number of attacks against on-premise infrastructure have remained almost the same.

The report concludes that businesses with a large volume of online customer interactions are targets for web application attacks to gain access to customer data. Businesses with few online customer interactions are more likely to be targeted for their proprietary company data, not their customer data.