The year 2018 will witness IT teams of big and small companies fighting with the below specified 5 cloud security threats. And if they fail to do so or ignore them, then it could lead them to big trouble.
Lack of Responsibility- Most IT heads are in thinking that if they move their apps and data to cloud platforms, their job is done as the cloud admins are supposed to take the responsibility of the security and maintenance of the assets placed on their platform from then on. In fact, cloud services providers do not have an objection to doing so if it is within their service level agreement which only includes resilience, data retention, and security practices. But in practice, the onus of cloud platforms comes with a shared responsibility model where the user also needs to take responsibility for the configuration settings as per their needs. And if they fail to do so, then it could land them into big trouble. For example, the recent federal data leak of 123 US households in which critical data was leaked due to a misconfiguration of a storage repository on AWS made by the user.
Lack of security tools and tests- In general, most public cloud service providers have an array 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. But only a few of the service users know these details which put their data and apps to risk. So, unless the service users take advantage of these tools, identification of potential cloud security threats will be difficult for them in the upcoming year.
Human Error- Although most of the cloud platforms are automated these days, they still put the human brains to work in some segments such as storage buckets configurations and security. And a human error in these segments such as compromised or misappropriated credentials can play havoc across the applications and data. So, all those who are permitted to play with the settings of cloud security should be aware of the consequences if they commit a blunder. For example, the admins should never use or reveal root credentials of a cloud storage platform. This can be only achieved if admins educate themselves about the vulnerabilities happening in cyberspace and especially learn to guard their company assets against cloud security threats. Security education and certifications will come handy in this aspect.
All Vulnerable APIs and systems should be covered- APIs enable software to connect to outside services including cloud services. For example, a business might develop an application that uses multiple APIs to access and exchange encrypted data from a cloud platform. If flaws exist in this interface, then APIs can act as sources which introduce new cloud security threats. The best way to defend against such software vulnerabilities is to be diligent and gain prompt corrective action from developers and operations staff.
IoT a boon or bane- Over the next few years, devices connected to the internet will reach 150 billion marks. So, each device will act as a network endpoint as it has an IP address and will remain subtle with complete configuration. There will be countless 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 vigilantes of cloud security threats. Poor software designs, 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.
