7 GCP Misconfigurations That Are Actively Being Exploited in 2026

**Executive summary:** This blog outlines seven GCP misconfigurations actively exploited in 2026 — disabled Data Access audit logs, legacy or misconfigured GKE auth and system:authenticated permissions, unrestricted firewall ingress to SSH/RDP/Kubernetes API, publicly accessible Cloud Storage buckets, overprivileged IAM service accounts (roles/editor or owner), default service accounts auto-mounted on VMs, and publicly exposed Cloud SQL — and recommends continuous CSPM scanning and AI-driven remediation to detect and remediate these high-impact misconfigurations.