It was only a few years back that cloud technology was in its infancy and used only by tech-savvy, forward-thinking organisations. Today, it is commonplace. More businesses than ever are making use of cloud services in one form another. And recent statistics suggest that cloud adoption has reached 88 percent. It seems that businesses now rely on the technology for day-to-day operations.

While cloud platforms have become increasingly popular thanks in part to the cost saving, scalability and collaborative benefits they offer, organisations cannot afford to be blind to the associated cyber security risks. If your business uses Office 365 (O365), the challenges are especially pressing. With more than 155m active commercial users every month, O365 is a prime target for cyber criminals.

And it’s not just the number of businesses using Office 365 that makes it an obvious target for criminals; given the average time it takes for organisations to respond to breaches, compromising a single O365 account could be used to attack an entire organisation. When a hacker has access to an account, they can potentially use that account to gain access to others.

Due to the value of compromising Office 365 users, hackers are becoming more sophisticated and creative in their approach. This is why it has never been more important to manage and monitor your cloud security. Here are three key ways that hackers are successfully compromising O365 accounts.

More sophisticated phishing campaigns

It is well known that phishing emails are used by cyber criminals – you might well have seen a few attempts in your own inbox. Indeed, many of us are used to seeing the occasional fake email purporting to be from a bank or service provider.

Phishing tactics are used to compromise Office 365 users in order to trick them into handing over (Read more...)