Be prepare, your IT teams will have to fight with these top Cloud Security Threats in 2018.
As more data and applications are moving to the cloud, it has also introduced a lots of new security threats and challenges.
Here are the top cloud security issues:
Data breaches
Data breach is the primary objective of a targeted attack or you can simply say that the result of human error, application vulnerabilities, or poor security practices, Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) says. It can involve any kind of information that was not intended for public release, including personal health information, financial information, personally identifiable information, trade secrets, and intellectual property.
Insufficient identity, credential, and access management
As per Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), the insufficient identity, credential, or key management can enable unauthorized access to data and potentially catastrophic damage to organizations or end users.
Insecure interfaces and application programming interfaces (APIs)
The UIs and APIs are designed to protect against accidental and malicious attempts to circumvent policy. As cloud providers expose a set of software user interfaces (UIs) or application programming interfaces (APIs) that customers use to manage and interact with cloud services.
System vulnerabilities
System vulnerabilities are susceptible bugs in programs that attackers mostly use to infiltrate a system to steal data, taking control of the system or disrupting service operations. As per Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), vulnerabilities within the components of the operating system put the security of all services and data at significant risk.
Account hijacking
An account or service instance is a base for attackers and it is not new. If attackers gain access to a user’s credentials, they can spy on activities and transactions, manipulate data, return falsified information and redirect clients to illegitimate sites. With stolen user’s credentials, attackers can often access critical areas of cloud computing services, allowing them to compromise the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of those services.
Malicious insiders
Its recommend to implement least privilege access rights in organization. A malicious insider such as a system administrator can access potentially sensitive information, and can have all privileges rights to access more critical systems and confidential data and can misuse of it. Also, the systems that depend solely on cloud service providers for security are at greater risk.
Advanced persistent threats (APTs)
APTs (Advanced persistent threats) are a parasitical or you can say that bloodsucking form of cyber-attack that infiltrates systems to establish a foothold in the IT infrastructure of target companies, from which they steal data.
Data loss
Data stored in the cloud can be lost for number of reasons other than malicious attacks, such as an accidental deletion by the cloud service provider, or a physical disaster such as a fire or earthquake, can lead to the permanent loss of customer data unless the provider or cloud consumer takes regularly back up of data, following best practices in business continuity and disaster recovery.
Insufficient due diligence
You must have data protection strategy. Because, when executives create business strategies, cloud technologies and service providers must be considered without performing due diligence expose themselves to a number of risks that turns to data loss and cost you.s
Abuse and nefarious use of cloud services
The Abuse and vicious use of cloud services is such as poorly secured cloud service deployments, free cloud service trials, and fraudulent account sign-ups via payment instrument fraud expose cloud computing models to malicious attacks. Examples of misuse of cloud-based resources include launching distributed denial-of-service attacks, the email spam, and the phishing campaigns.
Denial of service (DoS)
DoS (Denial of service) attacks are designed to prevent and secure users of a service from being able to access their data or applications. By forcing the targeted cloud service to consume inordinate amounts of finite system resources such as processor power, memory, disk space, or network bandwidth, attackers can cause a system slowdown and leave all legitimate service users without access to services.
Shared technology vulnerabilities
Cloud service providers deliver their services extensible by sharing infrastructure, platforms or applications. Cloud technology divides the “as-a-service” offering without substantially changing the off-the-shelf hardware/software—sometimes at the expense of security. Underlying components that comprise the infrastructure supporting cloud services deployment may not have been designed to offer strong isolation properties for a multi-tenant architecture or multi-customer applications. This can lead to shared technology vulnerabilities that can potentially be exploited in all delivery models.
Lack of security tools and tests
Mostly public cloud service providers have a set of tools and services designed to improve cloud security services on their respective storage platforms. For example, Amazon offers virtual cloud platforms, application firewalls; TLS based encryption, DDoS protection, Pen tests for every 3 months and dedicated connections to avoid the public internet.
IoT a boon or bane
There will be numerous IoT devices such as switches, solenoids, and values that may require a command and control from Cloud hosted workloads and this is where the trouble starts for protector of cloud security threats. The poor software designs and configuration flaws will obviously expose these devices to malicious actions of cyber crooks leading to the data leak. Thus, as the craze for IoT picks up in 2018, the vulnerability aspect will add on a proportionate note.