Large and small businesses alike are migrating to the cloud in search of greater efficiency and streamlined processes. According to a recent survey by O’Reilly, cloud usage is exploding across industries, with 90 percent of them utilizing cloud computing. Cloud computing can give your company a competitive advantage, but you shouldn’t rush into it without first recognizing the hazards.
It’s critical to understand the cloud’s weaknesses and keep basic security issues in mind whether you’re migrating to it, thinking about it, or are already there.
1.Malware
Cloud malware is a malicious code and service attack against a cloud computing infrastructure. Open cloud-based systems, standard or easy-to-learn cloud-based systems, and cloud-based systems made up of entities like virtual machines (VMs), containers, and storage buckets are all vulnerable to such attacks. An attacker will inject a malicious service into a cloud-based system, resulting in malicious service implementation modules or virtual machine instances in a conventional malware attack.
DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) is a typical malware attack in which thieves flood a network with malicious traffic using large-scale botnets. This type of assault greatly slows down the cloud computing infrastructure and can lead to its misuse. An intrusion in which the attacker arrives as a guest and asks domain access from the host is known as a hypercall kind of malware assault.
Standard network security makes detection and prevention difficult in such assaults. Malware assaults such as Hypervisor DoS (attacks on the hypervisor space) and Hyperjacking are only a few examples (takes control of the entire hosting and causes damage to the VMs). There are specific sorts of malware that can attack cloud-computing systems during their live migration.
2.Compliance
Due to expanding rules and industry standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and others, data privacy is a widespread worry these days. You must keep track of who has access to data and to what extent in order to guarantee that your company is compliant. When going to the cloud, you must first determine which countries your data is processed in, what laws apply, the implications of those laws, and how you will comply with them.
It might be difficult for a company to comply with different regulations in different regions, such as data protection laws, data localization laws, data sovereignty laws, interception laws, access to information laws, and so on.
3.Loss of information
Another growing risk for organisations these days is data leaking. It is cited by more than 60% of enterprises as one of their top cloud security risks. Cloud computing necessitates organisations delegating some control to cloud service providers, entrusting your sensitive data to someone other than your IT department.
According to the Thales Global Cloud Security Study, 40 percent of firms have experienced a cloud-based data breach in the last year. Half of the sensitive data saved in the cloud is still unencrypted by certain firms.
Apart from being aware of the aforementioned cloud security threats and implementing relevant solutions, keep in mind that cloud systems’ major benefits are accessibility and visibility. Cloud security strategies such as data encryption, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and privileged access security must be implemented by organisations that use cloud services.
Authored by Amit Verma, Managing Partner, Codvo.ai
