The average cost of cloud account compromises reached $6.2 million (£4.5m) over a 12-month period according to more than 600 IT and IT security professionals in the US.

This finding is the most revealing of many from a new report on ‘The Cost of Cloud Compromise and Shadow IT’ released by Proofpoint, a cybersecurity and compliance company, and the Ponemon Institute, an IT security research organisation.

Of the respondents, 68% believe cloud account takeovers present...