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Palo Alto Networks released its annual “State of Cloud Security Report 2025,” exposing how AI is driving a massive expansion of the cloud attack surface. The report finds that as cloud infrastructure expands to host the growing number of AI workloads, it has become a critical target, with 99% of respondents reporting at least one attack on their AI systems within the past year.
Simultaneously, the rise of GenAI-assisted vibe coding, used by 99% of respondents, is generating insecure code faster than security teams can review it. Of the 52% of teams that ship code weekly, only 18% are able to fix vulnerabilities at that pace, leaving unaddressed risks compounding rapidly across cloud environments.
Palo Alto Networks State of Cloud Report Highlights
New frontiers of cloud risk: Attackers are rapidly pivoting to exploit the foundational layers of the cloud, targeting API infrastructure, identity and lateral network movement, overwhelming already strained security teams.
API attacks jump 41%: As agentic AI relies heavily on APIs to operate, this explosion in usage has greatly expanded the attack surface, turning APIs into a primary entry point for sophisticated threats.
Identity remains the weakest link: Among respondents, 53% indicate lenient identity and access management (IAM) practices as a top challenge, confirming that insufficient access controls are now a leading vector for credential theft and data exfiltration.
Lateral movement risks persist: 28% of respondents point to unrestricted network access between cloud workloads as a growing threat, allowing attackers to pivot freely across environments and turn minor compromises into major incidents.
The growing imperative for cloud and security operations (SOC) unification: Multivendor complexity and tool sprawl are compounding risk, making unification of cloud security and the SOC a strategic necessity.
Tool sprawl creates blind spots: Managing an average of 17 cloud security tools from five vendors creates fragmented data and context gaps, slowing incident response. Consequently, 97% of respondents prioritize consolidating their cloud security footprint.
Siloes slow resolution: Disjointed workflows and isolated data sources between cloud and SOC teams stall remediation, with 30% of teams taking more than a full day to resolve an incident.
Cloud and SOC must merge: The consensus is clear: 89% of organizations believe cloud and application security must be fully integrated with the SOC to be effective.
The era of agentic cloud security: As adversaries use AI to launch attacks at machine speed, human-led defense is no longer sufficient. Palo Alto Networks Cortex Cloud, the industry’s first agentic cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP), transforms how organizations defend their cloud environments by using autonomous agents to deliver cloud security from code to cloud and SOC to network edge.
