Top Cloud Security Issues in 2022

We all know that cloud is keeping the business pace alive with modern-day storage requirements. It offers tremendous cost-saving benefits and, at the same time, comes with a ton of convenience. It also streamlines factors like innovation, speed to market, resilience, security, reliance on legacy storage and many more.

However, despite the wide array of benefits that the cloud provides, organizations also feel the burn of security on the other end. Here is where cloud security consulting services can help your business keep the mounting security challenges at bay. Through the blog, we help you define cloud security, its significance, and the top security issues rounding up the business cloud infrastructure.

What is cloud security?

Cloud security or cloud computing security includes software, policies, processes, technologies, and controls used to secure cloud data, services, and infrastructure. Ultimately, organizations require business-critical information to retain three essential facets – confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Securing your cloud data means identifying where it is and the accessibility options alongside eliminating existing security gaps. Organizations should also be aware of the security challenges associated with cloud storage. It is all about establishing and bolstering complete knowledge of your environment and denying attackers access to this information.

So, what are the top cloud security issues that organizations should learn and comprehend while edging through the final phase of 2022?

Top cloud security issues in 2022

Here we enlist the top security concerns or issues mounting on top of cloud-based infrastructure amidst the present threat landscape.

• Data breaches

Data breaches are always on top of organizational security concerns. The most advanced cloud customers are never far from the verge. Cloud data breaches can be nasty to your business, impacting business costs, fame, and customer trust. Unencrypted data is always an easy catch for an attacker.

To prevent the challenge, you should have improved knowledge about your data, its classification criteria, and the impact of a potential compromise. Here is where you need to be data breach ready with a tested and sound incident response plan. Also, to mitigate risks, you should prioritize your security controls and document them upright.

• Legacy Systems

While looking to build a robust cloud infrastructure, organizations require cloud-native tools, resources, policies, and personnel. And if you are pushing legacy tools on the cap of cloud infrastructure, that won’t work healthy. It is because many conventional tools like firewalls and network monitoring aren’t typically consistent and compatible with the cloud. You should also know potentially compromised target nodes that call for attack radius assessments of such penetrations.

• Misconfigurations

Misconfiguration of cloud security settings is a leading path to cloud data breaches. Many organizations face a deficiency of adequate cloud posture management strategies needed to protect cloud infrastructure. Multiple reasons contribute to the issue. One reason is the easy accessibility options of the cloud, where organizations fail to ensure that data gets accessed by authorized users only.

Organizations also lack the required visibility and control over their cloud infrastructure. They rely on the security controls offered by CSPs to secure cloud deployments. The situation opens the gate for security misconfigurations leaving cloud-based resources exposed to attackers. However, thanks to cloud security managed services, helping organizations offload security monitoring, reporting, and technical support to an external provider.

• Unauthorized access

It is important to note that cloud-based deployments of an organization lie outside its network perimeter, unlike on-premises infrastructure. As a result, these deployments become directly accessible from the public internet. While the situation proves beneficial for users with accessibility options, it also opens the backdoor to unauthorized access to cloud-based resources. Improper security configurations or compromised credentials pave the way for direct attacker access, potentially without an organization’s knowledge.

• Unsecured API’s/Interfaces

CSPs provide multiple Application Programming interfaces (APIs) for their customer organizations. Typically, they are well-documented for making usage flexible and easy for customers. But when it comes to the customer end, these might not be well-configured or secure enough for their cloud-based infrastructure. Likewise, the documentation prepared for customers can go utilized by cybercriminals. They can exploit insecure APIs to compromise or loot sensitive and private data from an organization’s cloud environment.

• Account hijacks

Account hijacking makes among the top cloud security concerns as organizations tend to rely more on cloud-based infrastructure and applications for core business functions. The root cause marks inadequate password security, including password reuse and dependence on weak passwords.

It simply means that if a password gets stolen, it gives the hijacker a chain of chances to use them with multiple accounts. An attacker holding an employee credential will have room to access sensitive information and functionality. It gives them complete control over the online account as organizations lack the capability to identify and respond to threats in the cloud.

• Denial of Service attacks

Cloud computing is a blooming technology which goes increasingly opted by many companies. Organizations use the cloud to keep business-critical data and to operate internal and customer-facing applications. DoS attacks are critical security risks in the cloud computing environment, where resources get shared by multiple users. A DoS attack preys on resources or services and forces them to be unavailable by flooding system resources with heavy amounts of unreal traffic. Here the attacker, in the aftermath, demands a ransom to stop the attack and poses a significant threat to an organization’s cloud-based resources.

• Insider threats

Yet another security concern in the cloud deployments sphere is the threat of malicious insiders. They already have access credentials to an organization’s network and some resources within the network. Insider threats are hard to detect for unprepared organizations with the level of access. The outcomes of a successful insider threat can take a medley of forms, including a data breach, forgery, stealing of trade secrets/ intellectual property, and collapse of security measures.

And when it comes to the cloud, detection becomes heavier than on-premises architecture. The crisis happens because organizations lying under the benefit of cloud deployments tend to lose control of their infrastructure in many ways. As a result, traditional security solutions are less effective. Adding to the frame, direct access to the public internet and security misconfigurations makes it more difficult to detect insider threats. Taking the aid and advisory of cloud security service providers reflects the best ways to detect issues like misconfigurations, accessibility challenges and insider threats.

Summing up

So far, we have enlisted some of the top cloud security issues that organizations face at the present time. It is vital for organizations to

know about these issues or concerns alongside identifying the counteract. Cloud-based infrastructure is unlike an on-premises data centre, and traditional security strategies and tools prove ineffective. And that takes you one step closer to cloud security managed services as an ultimate solution to your concerns. When cloud security is the concern, Valuementor, one of the leading cloud security service providers, offer a longer stretch of services to cater organization’s security needs. The line of services includes: –

• Identity & Access Management
• Cloud Network Security
• Cloud Security Services for Virtual Machine
• Office 365 Security
• Azure Security
• AWS Security
• Cloud Firewalls
• DevSecOps
• Web & Email Security Solutions

To know more about your customized action plan for addressing cloud security challenges, book a consultation with our cloud security specialist now!