Cloud computing offers businesses of all sizes and from different industries a myriad of benefits. With the pandemic and the shift towards remote working, many businesses have moved their data to a cloud environment. The Cloud’s scalability, flexibility, and security features have helped businesses run their operations more smoothly and improve workflow efficiency. However, when it comes to its security architecture, it poses several vulnerabilities that could result in legal, financial, or reputational damage to your business. With the cyber threat landscape and other security risks ever-evolving, you need to ensure you’re aware of the most common cloud security threats to avoid data loss or other business-damaging consequences.
Ensure to protect your business data from these top five Cloud security threats.
Common Cloud Security Threats
Misconfiguration
Misconfiguration, or in other words, not properly setting up your cloud security settings, can be one of the biggest threats to your cloud environment. Businesses that don’t have their own internal IT technician are usually not familiar with the infrastructure of the Cloud and incorrectly configure security settings. Misconfiguration can lead to potential data breaches and, if breaches do occur, make data breach detection slower and more difficult.
Data Loss
Losing valuable data or going through the long-winded, costly process of (not always successfully) restoring it can cause business downtime and, therefore, a major loss in revenue. If data is unintentionally or maliciously altered or deleted, you might never be able to get that data back. In particular, human error is a very common cause of data loss, and without a comprehensive backup process in place, critical data might be gone forever.
Cyber-attacks
With the growth of cybercrime over the last few years, businesses are increasingly targeted by cybercriminals. And the less secure your cloud environment is, the higher the likelihood of falling victim to an attack. Various cyber threats such as ransomware and malware, account takeover or Denial-of-service attacks can pose a high risk to your business data. The Cloud is a lucrative target for attackers as it hosts highly valuable data, most businesses use it to store their data, and it is often poorly secured, making it an easy target.
Poor Identity and Access Management
One of the main security risks to your cloud data is the poor management of identity and access control. The lack of use of strong access policies or identity authentication and verification processes can leave your data vulnerable to attackers as they can easily gain direct access to your systems.
Insecure Interfaces and APIs
APIs (application programming interfaces) are interfaces used to operate and manage the cloud infrastructure. Cloud service providers will often provide interfaces that are accessible and easy to use. However, if not secured or configured properly by the user, this can create security gaps in your cloud environment, making it very easy for cybercriminals to steal your data.
How Does Microsoft Azure Sentinel Improve Cloud Security
Data is one of the most valuable assets of a business. Losing it could have various damaging consequences for your business. That’s why ensuring a high level of protection for your Cloud data is critical.
And that’s where Microsoft Azure Sentinel comes in. In contrast to other Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) tools, Microsoft Azure Sentinel offers intelligent security analytics and threat intelligence across entire organisations.
With this Cloud-native solution, you can detect problems and solve them before they even happen. Combining comprehensive attack detection, threat visibility, and proactive hunting, Microsoft Azure Sentinel allows you to protect critical business data in the Cloud without having to worry about data breach, loss, or targeted cyber-attacks.
Download a copy of our new eBook “Cloud Security Threats in 2022” where we take a deep dive into the security concerns over the past year, and how that will impact cloud security in 2022.
Contact us if you have any further questions.
