E-Business
Sophos Global Report Shows how Cyberattacks on Cloud Honeypots occurs within Seconds

Sophos, a global leader in network and endpoint security has announced the findings of its report Exposed: Cyberattacks on Cloud Honeypots, which reveals that cybercriminals attacked one of the cloud server honeypots in the study within 52 seconds of the honeypot going live in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
On average, the cloud servers were hit by 13 attempted attacks per minute, per honeypot.
The honeypots were set up in 10 of the most popular Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers in the world, including California, Frankfurt, Ireland, London, Mumbai, Ohio, Paris, Sao Paulo, Singapore, and Sydney over a 30-day period. A honeypot is a system intended to mimic likely targets of cyberattackers, so that security researchers can monitor cybercriminal behaviors.
In the study, more than 5 million attacks were attempted on the global network of honeypots in the 30-day period, demonstrating how cybercriminals are automatically scanning for weak open cloud buckets.
If attackers are successful at gaining entry, organizations could be vulnerable to data breaches. Cybercriminals also use breached cloud servers as pivot points to gain access onto other servers or networks.
“The Sophos report, Exposed: Cyberattacks on Cloud Honeypots, identifies the threats organizations migrating to hybrid and all-cloud platforms face. The aggressive speed and scale of attacks on the honeypots shows how relentlessly persistent cybercriminals are and indicates they are using botnets to target an organization’s cloud platforms.

In some instances, it may be a human attacker, but regardless, companies need a security strategy to protect what they are putting into the cloud,” said Matthew Boddy, security specialist, Sophos. “The issue of visibility and security in cloud platforms is a big business challenge, and with increased migration to the cloud, we see this continuing.”
Visibility into Weaknesses
Continuous visibility of public cloud infrastructure is vital for businesses to ensure compliance and to know what to protect. However, multiple development teams within an organization and an ever-changing, auto-scaling environment make this difficult for IT security.
Sophos is addressing security weaknesses in public clouds with the launch of Sophos Cloud Optix, which leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to highlight and mitigate threat exposure in cloud infrastructures. Sophos Cloud Optix is an agentless solution that provides intelligent cloud visibility, automatic compliance regulation detection and threat response across multiple cloud environments.
“Instead of inundating security teams with a massive number of undifferentiated alerts, Sophos Cloud Optix significantly minimizes alert fatigue by identifying what is truly meaningful and actionable,” said Ross McKerchar, CISO, Sophos. “In addition, with visibility into cloud assets and workloads, IT security can have a far more accurate picture of their security posture that allows them to prioritize and proactively remediate the issues flagged in Sophos Cloud Optix.”
Key features in Sophos Cloud Optix include:
- Smart Visibility – Provides automatic discovery of an organization’s assets across AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) environments, via a single console, allowing security teams complete visibility into everything they have in the cloud and to respond and remediate security risks in minutes
- Continuous Cloud Compliance – Keeps up with continually changing compliance regulations and best practices policies by automatically detecting changes to cloud environments in near-time
- AI-Based Monitoring and Analytics – Shrinks incident response and resolution times from days or weeks to just minutes. The powerful artificial intelligence detects risky resource configurations and suspicious network behavior with smart alerts and optional automatic risk remediation
“Migrating several petabytes of data and many applications to AWS and Azure made it necessary to transition from a manual to automated process for security monitoring. Sophos Cloud Optix’s multi-cloud security and compliance platform capabilities provided real-time cloud workload protection status in seconds.
“The AI-powered monitoring and alerts helped reduce the noise and allowed our teams to focus on delivering value to the business,” said Aaron Peck, vice president and CISO, Shutterfly, Inc., a Sophos customer, based in Redwood City, Calif.
“Our goal is to provide the most comprehensive and highly-effective cyber security services to all of our clients. Whether in technology, manufacturing or utilities, our customers want to maximize their investments and protect their data in the cloud. The partnership with Sophos and the ability to offer Sophos Cloud Optix is important to us because it allows us to provide continuous compliance coupled with intelligent cloud visibility and immediate threat response. With Cloud Optix, our growing customer-base will have the opportunity to solve the toughest challenges in cloud security,” said Rajeev Khanolkar, president and CEO, SecurView Inc., a Sophos partner based in Edison, New Jersey.
Sophos Cloud Optix leverages AI-powered technology from Avid Secure, which Sophos acquired in January 2019. Founded in 2017 by a team of highly distinguished leaders in IT security, Avid Secure revolutionized the security of public cloud environments by providing effective end-to-end protection in cloud services, such as AWS, Azure and Google.
Pricing and availability details are available from Sophos partners worldwide.
For more information on Sophos’ findings, please read the full Exposed: Cyberattacks on Cloud Honeypots report and accompanying Naked Security article, Knock and Don’t Run: The Tale of the Relentless Hackerbots. Additional information on Sophos Cloud Optix is available on Sophos.com.
E-Business
Kaspersky Brings AI-driven Context to Cloud Workload Security

Kaspersky has updated its Cloud Workload Security (CWS) offering, introducing AI-powered workload analysis, enhanced integrations and performance optimisations designed to help organisations better secure complex cloud and hybrid environments.

The latest update brings integration with OpenAI API in the Kaspersky Container Security (KCS) part of the offering, also resulting in the creation of a new Advanced Pro license within the product.
The new capability provides contextual descriptions of detected vulnerabilities and potential risks, helping accelerate investigations, reduce knowledge gaps and support faster decision-making.
Designed for modern DevOps and hybrid cloud environments, Kaspersky CWS provides centralised visibility across workloads, Kubernetes clusters and cloud platforms, while supporting runtime protection, shift-left security practices and regulatory compliance requirements.
AI-driven visibility and improved workload protection
The update allows organisations to enrich container image scanning results with automated explanations and risk context generated by third-party large language models integrated via OpenAI API. By transforming technical scan data into actionable insights, the feature helps teams prioritise remediation and streamline security operations.
Additional improvements include single sign-on (SSO) integration and multi-domain Active Directory support, enabling more seamless deployment across distributed enterprise environments.
To optimise performance, Kaspersky CWS now also enhances image scanning efficiency by skipping oversized images when needed and avoiding rescans of identical images within a predefined timeframe. Expanded security policy capabilities and UX/UI updates further simplify workload protection and policy management.
Enhanced protection across cloud environments
The new release also updates Light Agent components, now leveraging the latest versions of Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Windows (version 12.12) and Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Linux (version 12.4) to improve overall security and integration capabilities.
“As AI adoption accelerates across industries, organisations are increasingly relying on containerised environments – placing additional pressure on security teams.
“To help ease this burden, we introduced AI integration within Kaspersky Cloud Workload Security that enables security professionals, including those just beginning their journey in container security, to make faster decisions and gain deeper insight into potential risks and vulnerabilities,” comments Anton Rusakov-Rudenko, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Cloud & Network Security at Kaspersky.
“Combined with performance optimisations and expanded integration capabilities, the solution helps organisations to protect cloud environments more efficiently while maintaining operational resilience.”
E-Business
SARS Denies Being Hacked by Nullsec Nigeria, Hacker Group

South African Revenue Service (SARS) has dismissed claims that its systems were breached, following allegations by a hacker group that it had compromised the tax authority’s digital infrastructure.

The controversy emerged after Nullsec Nigeria, a threat actor also known as Anonymous Nigeria, claimed to have breached both SARS and the State Information Technology Agency (SITA).
The hacktivist group allegedly posted links to download what it claimed was compromised data on the Breached hacker forum on Saturday, 23 May 2026, sparking concerns over a possible cyberattack targeting government systems.
However, SARS said it had conducted a thorough investigation into the claims and found no evidence that its systems had been compromised.
“SARS continuously monitors its systems for any suspicious activity and has conducted a thorough investigation in response to these reports. These claims are false and unsubstantiated,” the revenue service said in a statement.
“At this stage, there is no evidence that SARS’s systems have been compromised. SARS wishes to reassure the public regarding the integrity of its systems.”
The tax authority stressed that safeguarding taxpayer information remains one of its core responsibilities and forms part of its broader efforts to maintain public confidence in South Africa’s tax administration system.
SARS said the “protection of taxpayer information and the security of its digital platforms” is treated as “sacrosanct”.
The agency also urged South Africans to avoid sharing unverified claims and instead rely on official channels for accurate information.
“Members of the public are urged to verify information before sharing and not to circulate unverified claims or rely on information from unofficial sources,” SARS said.
At the same time, SARS warned taxpayers to remain vigilant against phishing scams and fraudulent messages falsely claiming to be from the tax authority.
For guidance on identifying scams and phishing attempts, SARS directed the public to its official online resource page: SARS scams and phishing guidance
SARS said it would continue monitoring its digital environment and communicate any developments through official platforms should the need arise.
E-Business
Pope Calls for ‘Disarming’ of AI, Warns of “New Forms of Slavery”

Pope Leo XIV called Monday for the “disarming” of artificial intelligence in his long-awaited manifesto on the rapidly developing technology, and warned of “new forms of slavery” behind its rise.

Leo, warned against “a race for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets, driven by the desire to secure geopolitical or commercial dominance”.
He presented his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity) in person at the Vatican, alongside AI experts including Christopher Olah, co-founder of US giant Anthropic.
Anthropic is embroiled in a legal battle with the US military after opposing the use of its technology for lethal autonomous warfare and mass surveillance.
At the presentation, Olah said AI companies operate “inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing”.
He welcomed input from outside actors like the Catholic Church, to “push events in a better direction” saying that “the questions raised by AI are bigger than the AI research community”.
In the encyclical, Leo also sounded the alarm over AI-directed weaponry, saying it was “not permissible to entrust lethal” decisions to tech.
Leo has repeatedly clashed with the White House over the Iran war and its use of religion to justify conflict.
The “just war” theory — espoused recently by the Trump administration — was “outdated”, Leo wrote, adding that “no algorithm can make war morally acceptable”.
AI could be worth up to $4.8 trillion by 2033, a 25-fold increase in a decade, while concentrating its profits in the hands of a limited few, according to the United Nations.
“Disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of ‘armed’ competition,” the pope wrote.
“To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity,” Leo wrote.
AI should be “human-friendly”, accessible to all, and open to discussion and debate, he added.
The head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics has made the hot-button issue a cornerstone of his papacy by dedicating to it his first encyclical — a document that lays the basis for Church teaching and longer-term debate.
The manifesto references a range of cultural giants, from Greek philosopher Plato to Beethoven and his Ninth Symphony, even citing a character from JRR Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”.
“Magnifica Humanitas” was signed on May 15, the 135th anniversary of an 1891 encyclical by Leo XIII, which laid the foundations of the Church’s social doctrine during the Industrial Revolution.
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