Cloud app abuse in financial services on rise, finds research

With the increased use of cloud apps for downloading data, there is also a rise in the amount of cloud apps being abused by malware attacks. The Telecommunications sector has the highest amount of malware downloads (attacks), followed by the financial services and technology sectors, found a Netskope Threat Labs Report on Financial Services. The report found that malware attacks primarily targeted users in the financial services sectors with Trojans to trick them into downloading other malware payloads. The report is based on usage data collected from a subset of Netskope’s over 2,500 customers, including more than 30 of the Fortune 100.

Abusing cloud apps for malware delivery enables attackers to evade security controls that rely primarily on domain block lists and URL filtering or do not inspect cloud traffic.

Netskope Threat Labs Director Ray Canzanese said this report highlights increasing cloud adoption, including increased data being uploaded to and downloaded from various cloud apps. It also highlighted an increasing trend of attackers abusing a wide variety of cloud apps, especially popular enterprise apps, to deliver malware (mostly Trojans) to their victims.

Netskope Threat Labs recommends financial service organizations review their security posture to ensure they are adequately protected against these trends.

Downloads from cloud apps are as common in financial services, with 93 percent of users downloading data from cloud apps monthly. However, uploads are slightly more common in financial services, where 69 percent of users upload data compared to 64 percent in other industries.

According to Netskope, while an average user in the financial services sector interacts with 25 different apps per month, Microsoft OneDrive is the most popular used app, with 54 percent using it on any given day, with 22 percent uploading data to and 23 percent downloading data from OneDrive daily.

Further, Netskope found that OneDrive is the most popular app in financial services, with 54 percent of users accessing it daily compared to 49 percent in other industries. OneDrive is also the most popular app for downloads in financial services, with 23 percent of users downloading files from OneDrive on any given day.

However, for videoconferencing and chat, Microsoft Teams is also more popular in financial services, with 38 percent of users using Teams per day.