Whilst, in today’s world they are N number of sophisticated cloud security tools in play, Gartner research has confirmed that humans-both end users and IT teams are causing dicey vulnerabilities which are being exploited by hackers to cause data breaches on reputed cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The research firm has confirmed that end users and IT teams are extremely susceptible to phishing attacks as they often commit mistakes by either using confidential info offsite or improperly deploy security services. Furthermore, the research has discovered that cloud security best practices are often ignored by employees in a bid to complete work as quickly and effectively as possible.
As security tools are not always intuitive and easy to use, most employees evade the process of following the regular security procedures causing immense loss to companies hosting data and apps on cloud platforms. This not only impacts the user of the cloud services but also maligns the reputation of the Cloud Service Providers(CSP) in one way or the other.
Thus, in order to cut down the risks associated with humans on the cloud, CSPs need to understand the limitations of their tools and create a security conscious workforce. At the same time, end users and those supervising them should try to educate themselves on the current scenarios prevailing in the cyberspace and try to inculcate the industry’s latest and best security practices to avoid data spill.
Use of data protection services like identification of sensitive documents like account numbers and alert employees on time to a potential cloud security risks should be practiced.
Also, there is a myth among end users that the company which is offering cloud services is solely responsible to keep its platform risk free. But this is untrue as IT teams still need to guard against threats- at least in public cloud environments. So, IT teams handling the data and apps off and on the cloud should learn to roll out updates for sure to remove security vulnerabilities. In public cloud environments, as said above, end users are responsible for these updates, which can minimize risks to a great extent.
Paul Korzeniowski of Tech Target feels that the best way to minimize human errors is to invest in a long-term approach and fully follow cloud security best practices to the core.
Note- Some of the long-term approach skills in cloud security are to audit operational and business processes from time to time, ensure effective governance, risk and compliance processes are existing, and manage people, roles, and identities to ensure proper protection of data.
