Unmanaged Cloud Credentials Pose Risk to Half of Orgs

Datadog’s 2024 State of Cloud Security report highlights the widespread use of long-lived cloud credentials across major providers—62% of Google Cloud service accounts, 60% of AWS IAM users, and 46% of Microsoft Entra ID applications have access keys older than a year—creating persistent exposure through leaked or unused tokens in source code, images, and build artifacts. The report concludes these credentials are unrealistic to manage securely at scale and advises adopting modern authentication, preferring short-lived credentials, and actively monitoring API changes commonly targeted by attackers.