The triumph of the cloud is one of the greatest success stories of the modern era. Rarely has technology overtaken the market so rapidly. The explosive growth of cloud infrastructure has, infact, paved the way for a rapid digital transformation. But what’s the reason behind such startling expansion of Cloud services?
In recent years it’s undeniably pandemic that fueled the rapid expansion of cloud services. Companies swiftly switched to the remote working model to overcome the restrictions caused by pandemics. Consequently, the demand soared for collaboration tools and consumer cloud services.
But, there is a downside to this rapid expansion of cloud services too. And it has manifested in the form of increased cybersecurity risks. Let’s explore more about the current cloud service landscape and the increased cybersecurity threats.
Higher adoption of cloud services has resulted in increased cyber-attacks on cloud users
According to a study, almost one in every five companies experienced cloud security incidents in the previous year.
Phishing, social engineering, brute force attacks, and many other exploits have been directed in massive numbers to thwart the cloud security infrastructure of organizations.
The security report further showcased that hackers are increasingly targeting the weakest and least protected points in the IT infrastructure of companies – their public cloud infrastructure and their mobile implementations.
Incidentally, the most common incidents were data breaches, data leaks, malware infections, and account hijacking.
Users have to understand that security responsibilities are shared in the cloud
In order to repel a constant barrage of cyber threats, the provider and the user both have to comply with stringent security protocols and follow shared security responsibilities.
The service provider is responsible for protecting its infrastructure, including the physical security of the data center and the software and the network setup which allows the execution of its services. The users on their end must secure the applications they use to access the cloud, virtual machines, and the whole setup.
This way, the cloud service provider is therefore responsible for cloud security at its end. At the same time, the user is responsible for effectively configuring security settings and implementing the standard security protocols to patch up loose ends that could give way to hackers to break in.
Bottom Line
The cloud is one of the most exposed technologies regarding cyber security risk, partly because of its disseminated nature. Moreover, the large-scale adoption of cloud services has only aggravated the situation of cloud security threats.
Under these conditions, both cloud service providers and users need to cover several points of vigilance and adopt various remedies to secure the whole cloud environment.
The bottom line is to treat the cloud infrastructure similar to a typical IT setup and apply the same cybersecurity principles to strengthen cloud security and computing in general. It means keeping the system always up to date and implementing the latest security architecture.
Last but not least, a workforce that is well adept with cloud services and security is now indispensable. Companies have to hire qualified employees who can deal with the complexity of cloud security and take timely action in case of a cybersecurity incident to mitigate the risk.
