Inside Q1 2025's Most Dangerous Cloud Storage Threats

Stay ahead of Q1’s top cloud threats with our expert guide to pre-ingestion data security. Misconfigurations, ransomware, and rapidly evolving malware—especially infostealers—are exploiting weaknesses before data even lands in storage. Our API-first, in-tenant malware scanning solution stops malicious files at the edge, before they become a breach. Empower your team to block threats early, meet compliance standards, and protect critical assets with confidence.

This paper discusses:

The rise of misconfigurations, ransomware, and malware—particularly infostealers—as the leading threats to cloud storage in Q1 2025, and why proactive security at the data ingestion point is more critical than ever.

How attackers weaponize legitimate cloud services and trusted file types to bypass traditional defenses and infiltrate storage environments undetected.

Best practices for preventing cloud data breaches, including access controls, encryption, continuous monitoring, and automated scanning of files before they enter storage.

How Cloud Storage Security’s API-based malware scanning enables organizations to block threats before they take root—enhancing compliance, reducing risk, and fortifying cloud infrastructure against today’s most dangerous attacks.

Summarized Excerpt

As organizations scale their use of cloud storage, the threat landscape continues to evolve—marked by a surge in misconfigurations, ransomware, and stealthy malware like infostealers. In Q1 2025 alone, tens of millions of records were exposed due to publicly accessible storage buckets, credential theft, and embedded threats in uploaded files. Relying on reactive security postures after data is stored or accessed is no longer enough. Instead, organizations must take a proactive stance by inspecting files before they’re ingested into cloud environments.

Modern attacks increasingly leverage trusted file formats—such as PDFs, Word docs, and image files—as delivery vectors for malicious payloads. These may include info-stealing malware, botnets, and remote access trojans, often hidden beneath layers of obfuscation. File type spoofing and format manipulation make it difficult to detect threats through basic checks alone. To effectively mitigate risk, organizations must implement layered validation and integrate real-time scanning directly into their upload processes through secure, cloud-native APIs.

This paper details how Cloud Storage Security’s API-first malware scanning platform enables organizations to detect and stop malicious files before they touch storage—cutting off threats at the source. It also shares security best practices for the pre-ingestion phase, including access controls, automation, and continuous monitoring, and illustrates how proactive threat detection can be woven into a modern, resilient cloud architecture.

Building a Strategy to Secure Your Cloud Storage