Evolving threats that plague cloud security

By CIOReview | Friday, February 1, 2019

Enterprises across the globe are moving critical data workloads to the cloud. Businesses today are aware of the multiple benefits of cloud computing concerning efficiency and profitability. To make cloud computing secure, enterprises should monitor risky configurations, anomalous user activities, and suspicious network traffic. Following are some of the cloud security threats and ways to avoid them:

Increasing account compromises: Many organizations have potential cloud account compromises. Security threats with credential compromises make organizations to enforce strong governance and full proof policies. Companies should implement strict monitoring to detect and respond to suspicious user activities.

Attacks on crypto-currency will diminish: The dropping value of cryptocurrencies across the world with enhanced detection capabilities lead to fewer cryptojacking attacks in the cloud. Industry estimates point that some of the organizations have found cryptojacking activity within their public cloud environments. Enterprises should implement necessary security protections before any attacks happen.

Ongoing compliance: Some organizations have only one cloud storage service, which is the main cause of many high-profile breaches.

Vulnerability management: Enterprises manage vulnerability by moving their workloads to the public cloud. Hosting the workloads in the cloud enables them to access regular infrastructure updates by service providers.

Insider attacks: Data breaching is one of the concerns due to insider or human mistakes as information moves to the cloud. Employees and contractors are referred to as a bigger threat to cybersecurity than a professional hacker. Building robust external defense may help data breaching from insiders to some extent.

Advance analytics deliver better cloud security: Enterprises use many security products such as data loss prevention (DLP) tools, security information and event management (SIEMs) antivirus software that generates massive amounts of data. Advanced analytics tools can process data from multiple sources and flag threats to sensitive data. Technology as User and Entity Behaviour Analytics (UEBA) underpin companies to establish strict control over their IT infrastructure before any breaches occur.

Ransomware attacks: Cybercriminals move towards less traditional and more profitable ransomware targets Iike connected devices, businesses and HNI (high networth individuals). According to the cybersecurity firms, the organizations should upscale their machine judgment and speed of orchestrated responses with human intellects. This helps to understand and anticipate cyber-attack patterns.