What Are Cloud Leaks? | UpGuard

This report explains what cloud leaks are—accidental public exposures of sensitive data in cloud storage caused primarily by operational and process failures—and illustrates the scale and impact with examples (Verizon/Nice Systems, RNC/Data Root Analytics, Booz Allen Hamilton). It details what types of data are commonly leaked (customer PII, corporate information, trade secrets, analytics), how leaked data is exploited (fraud, black market sales, extortion, targeted social engineering, surveillance), and recommends prevention through validation, automation, vendor risk management, and UpGuard’s platform capabilities to continuously validate cloud configurations and provisioning.