Almost every organization has adopted cloud computing to varying degrees within their business. However, with this adoption of the cloud comes the need to ensure that the organization’s cloud security strategy is capable of protecting against the top threats to cloud security. Some of these threats include:
- Misconfiguration
Incorrectly configured cloud security solutions settings frequently cause cloud data breaches. In addition, many enterprises’ cloud security posture management methodologies do not adequately protect cloud-based infrastructure.
Various things influence this. Because cloud computing infrastructure is intended to be user-friendly and to facilitate simple data exchange for businesses, ensuring that data is only available to authorized parties can be a concern. Therefore, enterprises adopting cloud-based infrastructure must rely on the security measures provided by their cloud service provider (CSP) to establish and secure their cloud installations. Organizations using cloud-based infrastructure also need complete visibility and control over their infrastructure.
It is simple for a security lapse or misconfiguration to leave an organization’s cloud-based resources vulnerable to attackers because many organizations lack experience protecting cloud infrastructure and frequently deploy multiple clouds, each with a unique set of vendor-provided security controls.
- Unauthorized Access
Unlike an organization’s on-premises infrastructure, their cloud-based deployments are outside the network perimeter and directly accessible from the public Internet. While this is an asset for the accessibility of this infrastructure to employees and customers, it also makes it easier for an attacker to gain unauthorized access to an organization’s cloud-based resources. Improperly configured security or compromised credentials can enable an attacker to gain direct access, potentially without an organization’s knowledge.
- Denial-of-Service (DoS) Attacks
DoS attacks can cause a machine or a network to crash, making it no longer accessible to users. Malicious attackers can either send information to the target that causes it to shut down or flood it with traffic to overwhelm it and cause a crash.
A downed network can be held for ransom and cause revenue losses, and it can also harm a company’s authority and customer relations. Cloud security experts need in-depth knowledge of how to implement DoS attack protection and remediation strategies.
- Unmanaged Attack Surface
An attack surface is your environment’s total exposure. The adoption of microservices can lead to an explosion of publicly available workload. Every workload adds to the attack surface. Without close management, you could expose your infrastructure in ways you don’t know until an attack occurs.
No one wants that late-night call.
Attack surface can also include subtle information leaks that lead to an attack. For example, CrowdStrike’s team of threat hunters found an attacker using sampled DNS request data gathered over public WiFi to work out the names of S3 buckets. CrowdStrike stopped the attack before the attackers did any damage, but it’s a great illustration of risk’s ubiquitous nature. Even strong controls on the S3 buckets weren’t enough to completely hide their existence. As long as you use the public Internet or cloud, you’re automatically exposing an attack surface to the world.
Your business may need it to operate but keep an eye on it.
- Cyberattacks
Cybercrime is a business, and cybercriminals select their targets based on the expected profitability of their attacks. Cloud-based infrastructure is directly accessible from the public Internet, is often improperly secured, and contains a great deal of sensitive and valuable data. Additionally, the cloud is used by many different companies, meaning that a successful attack can likely be repeated many times with a high probability of success. As a result, organizations’ cloud deployments are a common target of cyberattacks.
A completely new realm for storage, access, flexibility, and productivity has been made possible by the cloud. But unfortunately, it has also given rise to further security concerns. By being aware of these top 5 cloud computing security challenges, you and your team may develop a multi-cloud deployment security strategy to safeguard your company.
Therefore, working with a cloud computing solutions provider like Villextra Technologies Limited is one of the most efficient ways to secure your cloud-based systems with advanced security, whether you’re moving to the cloud or are already there.