An IT services company offers cloud services to a banking customer. The banking customer has raised a ticket about unauthorized access and data loss. They use an authentication token on a mobile…

SSL decryption to monitor connections to unknown cloud instances addresses shadow IT and data leakage to unapproved services, but does not detect token replacement or API-level data redirection occurring on an already-authorized platform.

Since the attacker replaced the legitimate token to redirect banking data, all unauthorized data access and exfiltration would occur through API calls to the cloud storage platform. Monitoring API activity allows security teams to detect anomalous access patterns, unexpected data reads or transfers, and token misuse before significant data loss occurs, directly addressing the attack vector used.

Monitoring external access outside expected operational areas is a broad perimeter control that would not catch this attack, since the attacker used a replaced token that appeared as legitimate application access from an expected source.

Monitoring firewall configuration changes is relevant to detecting insider threats or misconfigurations, but is unrelated to a phishing attack that exploits application-layer authentication to access and redirect cloud storage data.