Since its inception, the Greymatter Zero Trust Networking (ZTN) platform has been built on a core principle: application layer zero trust networking is too tightly coupled to the software and infrastructure layers it operates on. This exacerbates challenges at scale, including complex multicloud deployments, security vulnerabilities, regulatory compliance, cloud waste, and zero trust adoption. These issues lead to lost opportunities, high modernization costs, and governance gaps—often reliant on scarce expertise.

In 2025, we conducted a meta-study of recent industry surveys and market reports to identify the most pressing pain points in application networking and cloud security. This updated report pairs those challenges with evidence of how Greymatter solves them, we have added new metrics to reflect emerging threats like AI-driven attacks and container vulnerabilities. The numbers tell a compelling story of Greymatter’s value.


Container & Application Security

Container Vulnerabilities

61% of organizations report significant disruptions from container related incidents.

  • As a recent addition to the Gigaom Container Security Radar, Greymatter manages all ingress and egress traffic across containers and pods at L3, L4, and L7, shrinking enterprise blast radius and reducing exploits.
  • Enforces specific ciphers, security protocols, and acts as a granular policy enforcement point for every workload—by default.

Source: Check Point Cloud Security Challenges, 2025

Injection Attacks and Misconfigurations

45% of breaches are cloud based, with misconfigurations and injection attacks as leading causes.

  • Greymatter’s enforcement layer applies always on identity protections, impersonation safeguards, WAF, and message level inspection—without manual configuration.
  • Automated checks reduce OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities by over 90%.

Source: Expert Insights Cloud Security Statistics, 2025

Internal API Vulnerabilities

44% of corporate data exfiltration attempts originate from personal cloud apps, including internal APIs.

  • Greymatter secures internal APIs using mTLS and impersonation with a simple declarative command.
  • Centralized enforcement in under 10 lines of code.

Source: Spacelift Cloud Security Statistics, 2024


API & Data Protection

API Security

91% of organizations are concerned about their security systems’ ability to manage zero day API attacks.

  • Greymatter sensors stream telemetry to SIEM/SOAR tools.
  • Delivers 100% NIST-compliant Zero Trust API security with FIPS encryption and OPA enforcement.

Source: Spacelift Cloud Security Statistics, 2024

Basic API Security Plans

62% of organizations have basic or no API security plans in place.

  • Greymatter delivers turnkey, NIST-compliant API protections—instantly.
  • Tracks and secures all APIs with zero setup required.

Source: Salt Labs State of API Security, 2023

Production API Vulnerabilities

80% of companies experienced at least one cloud security incident in the past year, often tied to APIs.

  • Greymatter provisions cryptographic mTLS identities and verifiable trust boundaries with a single declarative command.
  • Secure token impersonation and IAM integrations protect APIs across multicloud environments.

Source: Expert Insights Cloud Security Statistics, 2025

PII Exposure via APIs

75% of organizations report that 40% of cloud-stored data, including PII, is sensitive.

  • Greymatter’s tracking and cataloging can be leveraged by security engineers and developers to denote and identify services that expose APIs, applications, and access events tied to PII.

Source: Thales Cloud Security Report, 2024

Zombie APIs and Legacy Components

35% of IT leaders identify outdated APIs and components as significant threat surfaces.

  • Greymatter automatically catalogs and tracks all APIs, including dormant or legacy ones.
  • Security patches can be applied fleet-wide in minutes.

Source: Google Cloud API Security Report, 2022


Identity, Access & Threat Detection

Malicious User Attacks

47% of organizations cite advances in AI-driven attacks, like phishing, as a primary concern.

  • Greymatter’s forensic tracking requires zero configurations, enabling security teams to detect malicious behavior from seemingly legitimate users.
  • Centralized policy management via Git ensures version controlled responses to new threats.

Source: Check Point Cloud Security Challenges, 2025

Over-Privileged Identities

82% of data breaches involve human error, including over permissioned identities.

  • Zero-config forensic user tracking reduces privilege escalation risks.
  • Integrates with IAM systems in fewer than 10 lines of code, enforcing least privilege access.

Source: Expert Insights Cloud Security Statistics, 2025

Zero Trust Adoption

20% cite skill shortages as a top zero trust adoption challenge.

  • Greymatter’s out-of-the-box, 100% NIST-compliant zero trust controls reduce friction.
  • Simplified mTLS and IAM setups accelerate rollout.

Source: Okta Zero Trust White Paper, 2022


Cloud Misconfigurations & Compliance Drift

Cloud Misconfiguration

88% of government agencies cite cloud misconfiguration as a top security concern in 2025.

  • Greymatter consolidates network and security policies in a GitOps repository with fewer than 10 lines of code.
  • Automated playbooks reduce boilerplate by 800%+, with dry-run validation ensuring deployment confidence.

Source: Spacelift Cloud Security Statistics, 2024

Multicloud and Hybrid Complexity

54% of organizations struggle to maintain consistent security and compliance across hybrid or multicloud environments.

  • Greymatter reduces zero trust configuration drift by a factor of 4x, ensuring consistency across clouds.
  • Integrates with 100+ security and API defaults to simplify hybrid and on-prem management.

Source: Cybersecurity Insiders Survey, 2024

Regulatory Compliance

70% of enterprises express concerns over adhering to evolving compliance standards in cloud environments.

  • Greymatter’s centralized policy layer manages application networking as code—version controlled, attributable, and Git-native.
  • Fleet-wide policy enforcement aligns with NIST ZTA, FIPS, GDPR, SOC 2, PCI DSS, and more.

Source: Adivi Cloud Security Statistics, 2024


AI-Driven & Emerging Threats

AI-Driven Cyber Threats

47% of organizations prioritize threat detection and response due to AI-enhanced attacks.

  • Greymatter’s AI-aware gateway secures AI tools, LLM APIs, and agents. All telemetry and audits is routed to SIEM/SOAR tools for anomaly detection.
  • Fine-grained policy enforcement enables immediate containment.

Source: Cybersecurity Insiders Survey, 2024

Cloud Vulnerabilities

76% of enterprises use at least two cloud providers, increasing vulnerability complexity.

  • Greymatter enforces zero trust across all environments with its cloud-agnostic service mesh.
  • Automatically catalog and secure all workloads using declarative templates.

Source: Spacelift Cloud Security Statistics, 2024

Shadow IT Detection

47.2% cite detecting unauthorized application usage (e.g., shadow IT) as a major challenge.

  • Greymatter’s granular visibility identifies shadow IT with no instrumentation.
  • Ingress/egress policy enforcement isolates unknown applications.

Source: CyberEdge ISC2 Survey, 2022


Operational Efficiency & Automation

DevSecOps Integration

41% of organizations face complexity from cloud native approaches impacting DevSecOps.

  • Greymatter’s DevSecOps playbooks cut integration time by over 70%.
  • Automated IaC scanning ensures secure deployment in both CI/CD pipelines and live environments.

Source: Spacelift Cloud Security Statistics, 2024

Skill Shortages

71% of organizations report a lack of skilled cybersecurity professionals for cloud security.

  • Greymatter’s 100+ automation defaults simplify adoption and reduce human error.
  • New application onboarding takes hours—not weeks.

Source: Spacelift Cloud Security Statistics, 2024

Cloud Resource Waste

94% of organizations report negative impacts from avoidable cloud resource waste.

  • Greymatter’s catalogs all managed services and dependencies to include usage metrics and audits. This data can be used to map and target potential waste and enable an enterprise to manage cloud resource utilization and waste.

Source: Forrester Study by HashiCorp, 2023


Visibility & Observability

Visibility Across Tech Stacks

56% of organizations struggle to safeguard data across multicloud environments due to inconsistent tools.

  • Greymatter’s unified console provides visibility into services, APIs, and infrastructure across all environments.
  • Apply fleet wide policies in minutes—with actionable telemetry and health insights.

Source: Adivi Cloud Security Statistics, 2024

Delayed Service Rollouts

70% of financial services firms report deployment delays due to cloud API security concerns.

  • Greymatter accelerates secure delivery cycles, reducing deployment times from months to hours.
  • Prebuilt playbooks simplify compliance ready rollouts.

Source: Spacelift Cloud Security Statistics, 2024


Conclusion

The Greymatter Zero Trust Networking platform directly addresses 2025’s most urgent enterprise security and modernization challenges—from AI threats and API risk to hybrid cloud sprawl and compliance delays. By centralizing policies, automating enforcement, and providing real time visibility across all environments, Greymatter empowers organizations to govern their infrastructure securely and at scale. Proven in defense and intelligence environments, Greymatter enables operational confidence—at speed.

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