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Cyber threats have been alarmingly increasing with the advancement of IT over the last decade. With current tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP), threat spreaders continue to exfiltrate customer and company's data, interrupt business operations, implant ransomware, and more
Fremont, CA: Cyber threats have been alarmingly increasing with the advancement of IT over the last decade. Higher the technological updation, the higher are the risks. Similarly, the risks are hovering over the cloud too. Moving to the cloud has become a trend now, and for better results, organizations, irrespective of their sizes, are resorting to cloud to be benefitted from its uncountable benefits. With this, the cloud security threat has also risen and has compelled organizations to take appropriate steps for cloud security.
With current tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP), threat spreaders continue to exfiltrate customer and company's data, interrupt business operations, implant ransomware, and more. According to research by cybersecurity ventures, the amount of damage caused due to cybercrimes is expected to hit $6 trillion annually by 2021. Misconfigurations are the only vulnerability that cybercriminals hold upon to break through the company's data.
On average, only 40 percent of an organization's workload runs in the public cloud; still, the organizations fail to identify the risk of misconfiguration accurately, which is comparatively higher than the risk in IT environments. With the new year approaching, there will be higher traffics on almost all the websites, which means a higher risk of cyberthreats. Let's sneak peek into some of the cloud security challenges and ways to avoid them.
Cloud Misconfiguration: The Greater Challenge
The configuration is the most common, yet an important aspect which companies ignore or take lightly while dealing with multiple Cloud Service Providers or the CSPs. Dealing with multiple CSPs require having multiple configurations, i.e., each with one provider. Due to the pressure to go fast and go big, developers usually ignore the security in the name of innovation. This ignorance leads to data exposure on a massive scale, for e.g., first American Financial Corporation breach in last May exposed over 885 million mortgage records. Companies consider they are faced with a lose-lose choice: either move to the cloud and accept the risk of a data breach or play it safe with existing on-premise infrastructure and lose out to more agile and modern competitors. This is, however, a false choice. The fact is that companies can continue innovation without losing anything in the cloud. This can be done by leveraging automated security tools that detect misconfigurations and alerts in advance to the responsible person to correct the issue. Automation enables to enforce policy, impose compliance, and provide governance.
New Year, New Threats
Malicious third parties, with their advanced tactics, techniques, and procedures, seek to either exfiltrate critical customer, company and partner data or interrupt or disable business operations. Companies assume that they will avoid data threats just by investing in additional security tools that they adopt, but that's actually not enough this new year. This can be both expensive and inefficient at the same time because the most pertinent data threats are unpredictable and need investment in holistic security solutions that can evolve and scale with a company over time.
IAM is the New Boundary
Every data in the cloud has an identity, and the relationships are complex. Security personnel are going to realize that Identity and Access Management (IAM) is one of the vulnerable areas in which they can lose control rapidly in 2020. Approaches and policies from the data center world don't transfer, and businesses need to invest rapidly in the process and also in supporting tools (including automation) to stay in front of this complex landscape. The consequences of poor IAM governance are extensive and sometimes unpredictable.
The Future Course
Both the present threats and opportunities will get elevated next year with the continued onslaught of misconfigurations and the challenge of managing identities in the cloud. Companies must know that they do not have to choose between innovation and security. Organizations can continue reaping the benefits of cloud and container infrastructure while remaining compliant and secure at the same time. Holistic security approaches leverage automated solutions and can scale with the enterprise over time, with the guarantee that threats are either brought to the notice of the appropriate personnel or remediated in real-time.
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