2026 Cloud Security Index Reveals Misconfigurations Across Major Providers

• •AWS accounts show high misconfiguration rates, particularly in S3 and IAM policies.
• •Azure's vulnerabilities mainly involve storage account security and identity management.
• •Google Cloud has the lowest prevalence of misconfigurations, likely due to its secure defaults.

The 2026 Cloud Security Index, published by Intruder, analyzed misconfiguration data from 3,000 organizations across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. The report highlights significant differences in security risks across these platforms, with AWS showing the highest rates of exposed services and misconfigurations. Key issues include S3 buckets not enforcing HTTPS (87% of AWS accounts) and weak IAM policies allowing privilege escalation (83%). Azure's most common misconfigurations relate to storage accounts, with 67% of accounts lacking key rotation. Google Cloud generally exhibits lower misconfiguration rates, attributed to its fewer services and more secure defaults. The findings underscore the complexity of managing security across multiple cloud providers and the critical nature of addressing misconfigurations to prevent breaches.