Cyber Brief: Data exposure risks and increased MSP targeting

Although today is quieter for confirmed incidents, two developments stand out across UK aligned reporting. Organisations are dealing with new disclosures of improperly stored data, and there is renewed concern about attackers pivoting through managed service providers. These themes remain some of the most significant drivers of business risk and regulatory attention.

New global data exposure alerts highlight ongoing misconfiguration issues

Several organisations across finance, retail and technology sectors issued advisories overnight following the discovery of misconfigured storage repositories that exposed customer or operational data. While the incidents were unrelated, they shared the same root cause: publicly accessible cloud storage containers that had been left open during system changes or integration work. In most cases the exposures were identified by security researchers rather than threat actors, but investigations continue to confirm whether the data was accessed.
These incidents reinforce a pattern that has become increasingly common. Many exposure events occur not because of exploitation of a software flaw, but because of errors introduced during hurried deployments, access policy updates or supplier led migrations. With environments growing more complex, configuration drift and poorly controlled automation pipelines continue to create high impact exposure risks. Regulators across multiple jurisdictions have also signalled that even unexploited exposures may fall within breach reporting requirements when sensitive data is involved.

Why it matters
Cloud data exposure is now one of the most frequent causes of reputational and regulatory harm. Every organisation should enforce continuous configuration monitoring, mandatory peer review for access control changes and automated alerts for publicly accessible storage.

Source
Industry breach and exposure disclosures

Attackers increase focus on managed service providers to reach downstream clients

A range of threat intelligence briefings shared within the last 24 hours point to rising activity directed at managed service providers. Attackers continue to prefer this route because compromising a single provider can offer access to multiple organisations at once. Recent activity includes credential harvesting against remote management tools, phishing campaigns targeting MSP support teams and attempts to exploit outdated plug ins within remote monitoring platforms.
The increased attention towards MSPs reflects the broader risk dynamic facing organisations that outsource core IT functions. Providers hold extensive privileges, maintain agent based tooling across client estates and often operate with elevated network visibility. When an MSP is compromised, attackers may inherit this access, enabling lateral movement into customer environments with minimal resistance. The challenge is compounded when customers assume that the provider maintains consistent security maturity, even though capabilities vary widely across the sector.

Why it matters
Supplier compromise remains one of the most efficient attack paths. Organisations should ensure MSPs meet defined security baselines, enforce multifactor authentication across remote tooling and provide transparent logs of all privileged actions. Where possible, segment MSP access and mandate frequent validation of remote management configurations.

Source
Global threat intelligence reporting

Today’s Key Actions

1. Audit cloud storage for public access and enforce continuous configuration monitoring.
2. Verify MSP security requirements and ensure all remote access tools use strong authentication.
3. Review incident response plans that depend on third party providers.
4. Validate alerts for configuration drift across cloud and hybrid environments.
5. Refresh supplier risk scoring to account for increased MSP targeting.

Secarma Insight

Today’s developments show that the most damaging incidents often stem from avoidable misconfigurations or inherited supplier weaknesses. Strong governance, continuous monitoring and clear supplier expectations remain critical to preventing cascading impact across the business. If you want help assessing cloud posture or validating MSP controls, our team can support you with rapid, actionable insight.

Get in touch with us to prioritise your next steps and strengthen your security posture.