The rapid adoption of enterprise AI is fueling an unprecedented surge in cloud security risks. To help organizations understand and combat escalating threats, Palo Alto Networks, the global cybersecurity leader, recently released its annual ‘State of Cloud Security Report 2025’, exposing how AI is driving a massive expansion of the cloud attack surface.
As cloud infrastructure grows to host the influx 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.
Vibe coding
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% can fix vulnerabilities at that pace, leaving unaddressed risks compounding rapidly across cloud environments.
“As organizations aggressively scale cloud investments to power AI initiatives, they are inadvertently opening the door to sophisticated new attack vectors. Our research confirms that traditional approaches to cloud security are inadequate, leaving security teams to fight machine-speed threats with fragmented tools and slow, manual fix cycles,” asserted Elad Koren, Vice President, Product Management, Cortex.
Report highlights
Based on a survey of over 2,800 security executives and practitioners across 10 countries, the report reveals critical shifts driven by AI in the cloud, including:
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.
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: As adversaries weaponize AI to further accelerate attacks, static visibility and siloed tools are leaving cloud environments exposed. The report emphasizes that, to stay ahead, organizations need an end-to-end solution that merges proactive risk reduction with reactive incident response.
