Cloud outages can significantly disrupt access to your security tools, leading to increased vulnerability. When security services hosted in the cloud go offline, organizations may lose critical protections such as malware protection and identity management, leaving them exposed to cyber threats. In 2023, 93% of enterprises reported downtime costs exceeding $300,000 per hour, highlighting the financial impact of such outages.

Human error is a major factor in cloud security failures, with Gartner projecting that by 2025, 99% of these failures will stem from mistakes made by individuals. Issues such as misconfigurations and leaked credentials are common causes of outages, underscoring the need for strong access controls and ongoing user training to mitigate risks.

Organizations can enhance their cloud security resilience by adopting a multi-cloud architecture to avoid single points of failure, strengthening identity and access management systems, and implementing zero trust principles. Regular monitoring of infrastructure health and ensuring compliance with regulations can also help maintain security during outages and reduce the risk of data breaches, which have targeted cloud-based systems in 47% of cases in 2025.