What are Top cloud security challenges?

Cyber Security
,
#1

Top cloud security challenges

Many of the traditional cybersecurity challenges also exist in the cloud. These can include the following:

  • insider threats
  • data loss
  • data breaches
  • IAM
  • key management
  • access control
  • phishing
  • malware
  • shadow IT
  • distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks
  • insecure application programming interfaces (APIs)

As for cloud security challenges specifically, administrators have to deal with issues that include the following:

  • cloud account hijacking;
  • lack of cloud visibility and control;
  • working with cloud security tools that in-house administrators may be unfamiliar with;
  • tracking and monitoring where data is located both in transit and at rest;
  • misconfigurations;
  • weak cloud control plane;
  • challenges understanding the shared responsibility model;
  • nefarious use of cloud services;
  • multi-tenancy concerns;
  • incompatibilities with on-premises environments;
  • cloud compliance; and
  • cloud governance.

Security administrators must have plans and processes in place to identify and curb emerging cloud security threats. These threats typically revolve around newly discovered exploits found in applications, OSes, VM environments and other network infrastructure components. To handle these security challenges and eliminate emerging threats, organizations must quickly and properly update and patch software that they control.

It’s also important to establish communications channels between in-house IT and CSP staff. In-house staff should subscribe to, monitor and digest the CSP’s security bulletin stream. If coordination between the customer and CSP is required to handle a security incident, well-documented communications channels must be established and continuously updated so time isn’t wasted when working through a security breach.