IBM’s annual Cost of a Data Breach Report offers its usual insights into the scale of cybercrime and the costs of security breaches. It paints a picture of a technological landscape which is becoming more complex, demanding and uncertain. As organizations increasingly migrate to cloud platforms, the need to fortify these digital landscapes against a plethora of threats has never been more crucial. So, what are the biggest takeaways from this year’s report with focus on cloud security?

Application architectures have been transformed in recent years. Modern application systems have become more complex with monolithic applications being replaced by more complicated applications based on multiple microservices and stored on cloud platforms. These applications run on new technologies based on Kubernetes, an open-source container orchestration system that automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

The philosophy of "shifting left" in software development is transforming the way we approach error and resolution. By moving the focus of error detection to earlier stages in the development cycle, teams can address issues when they are more accessible and less expensive to fix. Integral to this shift-left approach are Git hooks, powerful tools that allow us to enforce quality control right from the code-commit stage.

We’re using more code, software components, and dependencies than ever before, making security breaches an ever-growing threat. It’s easy for developers and DevOps teams to neglect dependency updates when faced with such high volume, but doing so allows applications to fall behind the latest versions if not properly managed. This typically leaves applications using outdated dependencies, which exposes them to ever-increasing security debt and risk.

Cloudflare has a unique vantage point on the Internet. From this position, we are able to see, explore, and identify trends that would otherwise go unnoticed. In this report we are doing just that and sharing our insights into Internet-wide application security trends. This report is the third edition of our Application Security Report. The first one was published in March 2022, with the second published earlier this year in March, and this is the first to be published on a quarterly basis.