Top 10 Cloud-Based Cybersecurity Threats Organizations Face Today

Cybersecurity has become one of the most crucial aspects of modern businesses.

Digitization has immensely increased during the past couple of years. The global usage of various services like video conferencing, automated tools, and other AI-based technologies has increased ten-fold during the work-from-home phase. But this phase also witnessed some of the most popular and major cyber hacks of the century.

As the use of digital tools increases, so does the amount of data that is being collected, which is why cybersecurity has become of utmost importance for businesses, be it small or big. Mostly this data is stored in encrypted digital vaults and in the cloud, which is also not exactly safe. Hence major tech companies have been facing cybersecurity threats which have forced them to take up even more advanced technologies. This has, in turn, created a barrier between the technical and non-technical personnel in the company since it might become quite overwhelming for the non-technical employees to keep up with the advanced cybersecurity measures. 

Businesses continuing remote work must secure their mobile devices and other access points.

Remote working has led employees to exceedingly use personal devices, like mobile phones, for official purposes. Although its facilities efficient productivity from the work-from-home space, it also reduces the visibility of IT teams. Different phishing scams and malicious links can be sent as SMS, which is sometimes difficult to track until it’s too late to find solutions to the damage already done.

Compromised Credentials

Compromised passwords and other credentials can lead to compromised data. The most common type of data leak generally includes personal customer data, like names, emails, and passwords. Almost 44% of breaches in 2021 were composed of breaches powered by a leak of the customer's personal information. Experts believe that an excellent step to reducing credential compromises is cybersecurity awareness training of the employees, both technical and non-technical.

A non-existing cloud strategy

Several organizations lack a proper cloud strategy for migrating storage to or computing in the cloud. While several enterprise leaders accept the fact that moving to the cloud will define clear economic and other benefits, leaders definitely need to have a plan for their cloud deployment systems that address robust security measures, including establishing strong boundaries that control and access the data.

API vulnerabilities

Cloud applications interact with each other through APIs, and most importantly, these APIs might seem quite tempting for business leaders. But unfortunately, earlier companies have not been able to utilize APIs successfully, but now with the advancement of modern technologies, it has become quite easy to exploit the advantages generated by APIs. Malicious actors can also exploit these APIs by launching DoS attacks and code injections, which will eventually allow them to access company data.

Negation of vulnerabilities in services

Businesses may possess various service vulnerabilities that leaders are either in denial of or are unaware of. Shared cloud platforms and internet connections are linked by a collection of pipes through which the data travels. While the cloud storage provider might logically segment this shared physical infrastructure, DDoS attacks can still clog those pipes and slow down servers to the degree to which the organization will be directly affected.

Misconfiguration

The root cause of some of the worst cyberattacks in the world is caused due to misconfiguration. Cloud governance tends to weaken when they are exposed to data buckets, misconfigured access controls, and excessively lax permissions. But unfortunately, leaders only realize this after a major incident occurs, after which companies generally put strong guardrails with higher monitoring and oversight.

Data sovereignty

Cloud providers generally possess a number of geographically diverse data centers. This enables them to improve the accessibility and performance of cloud-based resources and make it easier for CSPs to make sure that the professionals are capable of maintaining service level agreements during events such as natural disasters, power outages, and others. This creates major issues around data sovereignty and residence. This is because the use of a cloud platform with data centers outside of the approved areas might lead the company towards a state of regulatory non-compliance.

Lack of skills promotes cybersecurity threats

Companies strive to fight for the most skilled IT talent to implement security measures for the increased cloud attack surfaces. But unfortunately, the leaders will not be able to solve all their problems through the hiring process. They will also have to take other measures and adopt the tools and processes to increase visibility and automate their responses.

Malware infections

Security teams have quite frequently found that malware detection might not be an issue if they have already been implemented at the endpoint security software and client-side firewalls. But it becomes an issue if the security teams have applied multiple layers of security to detect it.

Insider threats

The biggest threats that an organization faces are insider threats which are usually more hazardous than outsider threats as cybersecurity professionals can take months or even years to identify the threat. The masterminds are sometimes the individuals with legitimate access to the organization’s cloud systems, jeopardizing the entire reputation and legitimacy of the company.

The post "Top 10 Cloud-Based Cybersecurity Threats Organizations Face Today" is authored by Sayantani Sanyal.