Navigating Cloud Security Risks: Strategies to Address the Most Critical Threats

In today’s digital world, cloud computing is essential for many businesses, providing unmatched flexibility, scalability, and efficiency. But with these benefits come serious security challenges. As companies rely more on cloud services to store and manage their important data, protecting these environments becomes crucial. 

Cloud security threats are constantly evolving, and businesses need to stay alert to protect their sensitive information and maintain smooth operations. This blog explores the top cloud security threats, their causes, impacts, and the best ways to tackle them. By understanding and addressing these threats, businesses can secure their data and fully harness the power of cloud computing.

Current Leading Cloud Security Threats

As organizations increasingly migrate their critical operations to the cloud, these security threats has emerged as the leading security threat. It often results from complex cloud environments and insufficient security measures, leading to vulnerabilities that cybercriminals can exploit.

Misconfiguration Of The Cloud

Misconfiguration refers to an incorrect or inadequate way of configuring a cloud, which results in uninvited vulnerabilities in the cloud environment. 

What is Cloud Misconfiguration?

Configuring the cloud is the foremost thing that an organization does. If not done correctly, it may result in errors and glitches, posing a significant risk to sensitive business information. 

It is not only the initial configuration that matters but also the aftermath. Cloud providers keep adding new services or features to the cloud, making it a scalable solution for businesses. To cope with the advances, focused setup and upkeep are mandatory. 

Moreover, technical as well as non-technical configurations play a vital role in maintaining the security of the cloud. 

Types of Cloud Misconfigurations

1. Sharing Over Access And Allowing Permissions

When the cloud is being set up or a new feature is introduced, it initially asks for the required permissions. However, a person with a lack of cloud knowledge might allow permissions and access that are not relevant or required to be enabled. The needless exposure of information and allowances can increase the chances of unauthorized parties entering the system. 

Many times, businesses confuse ‘authenticated’ users with ‘authorized’ users, which also hampers cloud privacy. Authenticated users are the ones who might have access credentials but are not legally allowed to access the information. Whereas, authorized users are allowed to access the data legally. 

An authorized user is always an authentic user, but an authentic user is not always an authorized user. 

Overaccess might include:

• Allowing outdated protocols on the cloud server
• Opening ports to the internet
• Exposing sensitive APIs without proper security
• Allowing communication between private and public resources

2. Misconfigured Open Inbound and Outbound Ports.

These ports allow data transfer inside or outside the cloud environment when connected to the internet. Therefore, when configuring the cloud environment, users must ensure that their inbound as well as outbound ports are closed or restricted to the essential systems only. 

Open inbound ports can allow uninvited visitors into the system, causing them to hamper its functioning and data. On the other hand, outbound ports can lead to data breaches, compromising sensitive business information. 

3. Disabled Logging

By default, logging is disabled or turned off to reduce the maintenance of the system. However, it might restrict the system’s ability to detect potential threats and resolve them, causing a risk of intrusion, data theft, and damage. 

These are some of the main misconfigurations that you must avoid to restrict vulnerabilities in your cloud infrastructure. 

Risks Associated with Cloud Misconfiguration

Misconfiguration of the cloud can give rise to or allow other risky vulnerabilities, such as malware, viruses, and hackers, to enter the cloud environment and cause damage. According to SentinelOne, 23% of cloud incidents are a result of cloud misconfiguration. 

These vulnerabilities can result in data leaks and thefts of all the sensitive data stored in the cloud. 45% of data breaches are primarily caused by the misconfiguration of the cloud, as per Expert Insights. This data breach led third parties to leverage this data to cause reputational damage or financial harm to the organization. A Forbes report reveals that nearly 46% of organizations suffer reputational damage after their data gets leaked. It took them a significant number of years to recover from the damage and get back to normal business operations. 

Moreover, misconfiguration can also lead to unauthorized access to the organization’s network, which gives unauthorized access to the organization’s transactions. 

Simplifying it, misconfiguration is a major threat that results in data breaches and theft. It can also lead to identity theft and unauthorized network access, resulting in serious damage to the reputation and finances of the organization. 

Addressing Cloud Misconfiguration

• Recheck Configurations: The first and foremost step is to recheck all your configurations. Your operations team and developers might have granted permissions that are of no use. Therefore, gain insight into them and limit your access control. Also, know where your cloud services or assets are located and where they are being used.

• Perform Security Checks: Make it a necessity to perform security checks on your system on a timely basis. It makes sure that your system is protected against the latest threats and follows compliance. You can leverage security tools or software to keep your system protected and updated. Plus, they identify potential threats in your cloud.

• Develop Strategies And Policies: The IT professionals of an organization should create strategies to ensure new instances of cloud infrastructure or applications based on past experiences. Consulting with a specialized cloud consulting services provider can also provide expert insights and solutions to prevent misconfigurations and other security risks.

Also Read: What is Cloud Security? 9 Cloud Security Best Practices in 2024

Insider Threats: The Second-Greatest Cloud Security Threat

Understanding Insider Threats

It is the second-ranked threat to cloud security and denotes a potential risk to an organization from a person connected to the organization. It could be anyone who is directly or indirectly associated, such as an employee, an ex-employee, a consultant, a board member, or even the vendor. A report by Version reveals that data breaches significantly involve 30% of people from inside the organization. 

These insiders might have a strong reason to perform malicious activities such as revenge, ideology, political alliances, financial harm, and more. However, these insiders might do it out of curiosity and boredom as well.  

What makes this threat particularly dangerous?

The reasons are similar—financial or reputational damage to an organization. However, additional consequences are as follows: 

• Stealing of data and information
• Data leak
• Damage to data and systems
• Selling companies’ secrets
• Misplaced organization equipment
• Falling victim to the attack’s scam

Addressing Insider Threats

You can consider the following points to ensure protection from insider threats: 

• Map out where your organization’s sensitive data is stored
• Keep a check on departing employees and ensure their access to the system is no more.
• Provide security training to your employees regarding password encryption, reporting missing equipment, and identifying scams.
• Keep control of your permissions and equipment lockout
• Set alerts for suspicious activities, such as:

1. Application access from unknown devices

2. Suspicious downloads and uploads

3. Unexpected DNS or HTTP queries

4. Changes to sensitive files data and other activities

Also Read: What is an Insider Threat? Definition, Types, and Prevention

Other Notable Cloud Security Threats

Misconfiguration of cloud and insider threats are the top security vulnerabilities that an organization might face. However, there are other threats as well that might have a significant impact. Some additional threats include: 

Denial of service attacks

The attack makes a machine or a network inaccessible to the intended users, causing the removal or discontinuation of access. It is done by flooding the targeted network with traffic or sending some information that triggers the crash of the system. At first, the information buffer This attack is mainly targeted at top-level authorities, such as board members and other employees of the organization who have access to vital business information. 

Resolution:

• Restrict traffic to specific locations
• Implement a load balancer
• Block communication from outdated or unused ports
• Log your patterns and monitor them regularly
• Protect your wireless devices and networks by using a VPN wherever possible

Account hijacking

A cloud platform requires the credentials of an authorized user to access the space. When a hacker or cybercriminal hijacks these credentials, they gain access to all the sensitive data, services, and tools. Moreover, the whole system can be leveraged by the attacker for malicious activities. 

Resolution:

• Enable multi-factor authentication in your system
• Implement zero trust policies i.e. consider all the users as untrusted, which enables them to authenticate themselves to access important files and resources

Zero-day exploits

It refers to a vulnerability that takes place in software or hardware that is just known by the vendor, and they have no time left to fix it. They take advantage of an unknown or unaddressed security flaw in the system that is unnoticed by the vendor’s or organization’s eyes. They have just discovered the flaw, and now they have ‘zero-day’ to resolve it. 

Resolution:

• Regular updates to system and software
• Leveraging an intrusion detection system
• Enable alerts for unusual activities

Also Read: Beyond Passwords: Exploring Advanced Authentication Methods

Conclusion

These are some of the latest yet major cloud security threats and their prevention or solution tactics. However, it is advised to follow common security protocols, such as installing a reliable firewall solution, installing trusted antivirus and anti-malware software, leveraging an intrusion detection system, following the latest security compliance, and more.