Credential-Based Attacks Surge: The New Front-of-Data Breach Risk 

The era of malware-dominated cyberattacks is waning. For CIOs, CISOs, and infrastructure leads overseeing cloud-first architectures, the biggest risk today is trusted access—attackers using legitimate credentials and APIs to silently siphon data.

In this new landscape, security can’t just defend boundaries; it must guard identity, context, and data flows. Zero-trust principles, continuous monitoring, and data-centric controls are no longer optional.

As adversaries shift strategies, compliance and privacy programs must follow. Checkboxes alone won’t protect you when threat actors exploit the same systems your teams use. Below is an excerpt that frames this wake-up call, backed by startling data and emerging threat models:

As reported by Tim Freestone in “Data Security Wake-Up Call: How Modern Cyberattacks Are Redefining Privacy and Compliance” on SecurityInfoWatch:

“The numbers tell a sobering story.

Cloud intrusions surged 136% in just the first half of 2025, according to CrowdStrike's latest Threat Hunting Report. But here's what should keep data protection officers awake at night: 81% of these intrusions used zero malware.

No viruses, no trojans, just stolen credentials and patient adversaries who understand your compliance frameworks better than you might think.

This isn't your traditional cyberattack narrative, and today's threat actors aren't just breaking down digital doors. They're walking through them with legitimate keys, exploiting the very tools and processes organizations rely on for innovation and efficiency.

For those responsible for data security, privacy, and compliance, this evolution demands a fundamental rethinking of protection strategies.”

When Legitimate Access Becomes the Weapon

The shift away from malware-based attacks represents a complete reimagining of how data breaches occur. China-nexus groups like GENESIS PANDA and MURKY PANDA have demonstrated sophisticated understanding of cloud infrastructure, using Instance Metadata Services to obtain credentials and then leveraging those credentials for systematic data harvesting.

Consider GENESIS PANDA's approach. After compromising a cloud-hosted server, they query metadata services to obtain cloud control plane credentials. From there, they execute bulk exports from storage buckets, create backdoor accounts for persistent access, and deploy custom tools to automate sensitive data discovery.

All this activity generates minimal security alerts because it uses legitimate cloud management APIs. Your security systems see authorized API calls, not a data breach in progress.

This presents a compliance nightmare. Traditional data loss prevention solutions struggle to distinguish between legitimate administrative activity and malicious data collection when the adversary is using valid credentials and standard tools.

The result? Organizations may not even realize they've experienced a data breach until long after sensitive information has been compromised.” 

Continue reading “Data Security Wake-Up Call: How Modern Cyberattacks Are Redefining Privacy and Compliance” by Tim Freestone on SecurityInfoWatch. Read the full article.

Why It Matters to You

TechEDGE readers building or securing cloud-native systems are facing an inflection point: breaches no longer require “exploits,” but often just valid authentication. When adversaries move through your systems using the same tools your teams rely on, traditional defenses fail. Identity becomes the battleground, and your data boundaries are porous unless defended with context, policy, and real-time monitoring.

Data protection, compliance, and security operations must converge. You can’t rely on periodic audits or static policy boundaries when attackers mimic insiders. You need dynamic controls, behavior analytics, and layered guardrails. If your cloud environment isn’t already instrumented for contextual identity checks and anomaly-aware access, today’s threats demand you accelerate that roadmap.

Next Steps

• CISO/Security Lead: Conduct a “trusted-access audit” to measure how many systems accept administrative API calls without relationship context or behavior constraints. 
• Identity/Access Teams: Deploy continuous access validation—require re-authentication or step-up when anomalous patterns emerge, even for valid users. 
• Security Engineering/Platform Teams: Instrument all API and cloud metadata access with fine-grained logs to detect unusual flows (e.g., mass exports, metadata queries). 
• Compliance/Risk Officers: Redesign your compliance model to include dynamic thresholds, anomaly triggers, and continuous policy checks—not just point-in-time assessments. 
• Executive/Strategy Teams: Present to leadership the “cost of breach invisibility,” showing how undetected exfiltration via valid channels undermines even “compliant” systems.