How do you Manage to Cloud Security Risks?

Cloud technology has turned cybersecurity upside down. The sheer volume, accessibility, and connectivity of data created a vulnerability to numerous security threats. Unfortunately, businesses were slow to take this issue seriously.

The shift to cloud computing has created new security concerns. Cloud computing services are online; anybody with the proper credentials can use the cloud. The fact that enterprise data is accessible has attracted a lot of hackers who try to investigate the systems, discover weaknesses in them, and exploit them for their gain.

In this post, we'll review six major security risks to cloud computing and provide a method to mitigate those risks and avoid these threats.

What are the major cloud computing security concerns?

Poor Access Management

Access management is among the most frequently encountered cloud computing security hazards. Access management is the most important factor in everything. This is why hackers target the issue so heavily.

In 2016, LinkedIn was the victim of a huge data breach affecting users, including account passwords (approximately 163 million).

The reason was:

• insufficient crisis management
• ineffective information campaign
• the guile of hackers

In the end, a few accounts were taken over, causing an extensive search for their administrators over the next few months.

Here's a different example of cloud security risks. A report reported that Facebook and Google kept users' passwords in plain text in the last few months. While there was no leak, the practice is ready to lead to some.

• The most serious cloud security risks are information breaches and data leaks.

The cloud security risk that comes with the data breach is a cause-and-effect thing. If a data breach occurs, it means that the business was unaware of some cloud security vulnerabilities that led to the natural consequences.

What is a " breach of data"?

It's an incident where the data was obtained and accessed without authorization. This usually leads to data leaks (data located where it's not supposed to be).

Confidential data can be made available to the public. However, typically, it is traded for sale on black markets or held as a ransom.

The severity of the consequences is contingent on the crisis management abilities of the particular business; the incident harms the company's image.

How can we prevent data breaches from occurring?

A cloud security solution requires a multi-layered approach that monitors and covers the entire scope of user activities at every methodological step. This includes:

Multi-factor authentication: The user needs to present more than just proof of authenticity and login credentials. For instance, entering an account password and receiving a message via a mobile phone containing an unintentionally generated string of numbers that is active for a brief period This is now one of the security practices for cloud services today.

Data-at-Rest Encryption. Data-at-rest is a kind of data kept in the system but not accessible to other devices. This can include data, logs, databases, and other types.

A perimeter firewall that manages outbound and inbound traffic between public and private networks;

The internal firewall is used to monitor authorized traffic and spot irregularities.

• Data Loss

As if a data breach isn't enough of a problem, there's another more serious cloud security risk, which is the possibility of losing it forever, like raindrops. Unfortunately, data loss is among the risks to cloud security that are difficult to forecast and more challenging to deal with.

Insecure storage media downtime occurs when data is lost because of issues on the cloud services provider's part.

Data deletion, i.e., accidental or improper data removal from the system, with no backups that can be restored The cause is typically a human error, a messy data structure, a system glitch, or a malicious motive.

Access denied When data is still stored but not available because of a lack of encryption keys or other credentials (for instance, personal account data).

• Insecure API

API (also known as "Application User Interface" or "API") is the main instrument that runs the cloud-based infrastructure.

This includes both internal use for the company's employees and the external use of users via apps like mobile or web-based applications. External use is crucial because the data transfer allows the service to function and, as a result, offers all kinds of analysis. The accessibility of APIs creates a serious cloud security threat. Furthermore, APIs collect information from devices that use edge computing.

How can you avoid issues with the API?

There are a variety of ways to do this:

Penetration testing simulates an external attack that targets specific API ends and tries to breach the system's security and gain access to the company's internal data.

General security audits of the system

To secure data transmission, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Secure Layer encryption is used for the Transport Layer.

Multi-factor authentication is used to prevent unauthorised access caused by security flaws.

Misconfigured cloud storage

A recurrence of an insecure API cloud security risk is unconfigured cloud storage. Most of the time, cloud computing security issues arise from a cloud administrator's omission and, later, simple inspections.

This is what it does.

Cloud misconfiguration refers to a configuration that cloud service users have to make (for storage or computing reasons) that exposes them to hacks.

• DoS attack: denial-of-service attack

Scalability is among the main benefits of moving to the cloud. In addition, it can support the burden of a large number of users.

However, this does not preclude it from handling things more abruptly. It could overflow and cease functioning. This is a major security risk to cloud services.

In conclusion

Cloud computing has changed the game for both hackers and businesses. It introduced a variety of new security issues for cloud computing and created several issues.

The transition to cloud-based technology provided businesses with the scalability and ability to be modern and competitive in a constantly changing software development environment. However, in the same way, it also made corporate data susceptible to losses and leaks for various reasons. Affiliating with the best practices of cloud security can be the most effective method to safeguard your business from financial and reputational losses.