Top 10 Cloud Computing Security Issues And Challenges
More data, as well as applications moving to the cloud, creates various cloud security challenges and security issues in cloud computing for businesses, the top 10 of these potential cloud computing security issues for 2021 are as follows:
- Data Breaches and Data Loss: Data breaches may be the chief objectives of any targeted attacks or simply they can be the outcomes of human errors, vulnerabilities of applications, or maybe poor cloud security practices. Sensitive data may include that information is not intended for being released publically, including personal information, health records, financial data, personally identifiable information, secret trade secrets, as well as intellectual property. Any organization’s data stored over the cloud might be having greater value to multiple different parties for many different reasons. Data breach risks are common in cloud computing working models of organizations and they consistently remain the topmost concerns of cloud customers.
- Data Loss: Data stored over the cloud could also possibly get lost for some reasons other than any such malicious hacking attacks. Any mistaken data deletion by any cloud service provider, or any physical catastrophe like saying resulting from fire or earthquakes, etc., may result in permanent data loss unless the service provider or the cloud consumer had been taking adequate steps to back up their data, and following the best business practices for disaster recovery.
- Inadequate Identity and Access Management: In any organization, some bad elements disguising as legitimate users/operators/developers could read/modify/delete critical data and alter management functions, inquire secretly about any critical data in transit, or can even release some malicious software appearing to have originated from some legitimate sources; resulting in inept identity and access management; thus enabling unauthorized data access; leading to potentially catastrophic damages to those organizations or their end users.
- Insecure APIs and Interfaces: Cloud service providers help in exposing multiple software user interfaces or UIs and Application programming interfaces or APIs, which customers tend to use for managing and interacting with their cloud services in use. Cloud security depends largely on the security of these APIs.
- Vulnerabilities of the Systems: Vulnerabilities of any system are those exploitable bugs, which are there in programs, which attackers use for infiltrating that system to steal crucial data, get control of that system, or may be disrupting the overall service operations. This can put enterprise security at significant risk.
- Hijacking of Accounts: Accounts hijacking or service hijacking is not something new, but cloud computing services have added this newfound threat to the entire landscape. If hackers and attackers start gaining access to users’ credentials, then they can listen in on critical activities as well as transactions, they can also manipulate data, return falsified info and redirect company clients to certain illegitimate sites. Account/service instances can become the new bases for these attackers. With such stolen user credentials, hackers can also access the other critical areas of cloud services, thus allowing those attackers to attack the systems and thus integrity, availability, and confidentiality of these services are largely compromised.
- Suspicious Insiders: Malicious insiders including system admin, who can potentially access the company’s sensitive data, can result in increased levels of malicious access to critical data. Systems solely depending on cloud providers for cloud security purposes seem to be at a higher level of cloud computing security issues.
- APTs: Advanced persistent threats or APTs are those parasitical forms of cyber attacks that infiltrate systems for establishing their footholds in the IT infrastructures of targeted firms, from which they are projecting to steal data. APTs tend to pursue their malicious goals in a stealth manner that is marked by secrecy over elongated periods, often tending to adapt to the security measures created by firms to defend against them. Once they are well in place, these APTs move laterally through various data-center networks and they can even blend in with the normal network traffics for achieving their goals.
- Not Enough Due Diligence: When creating business strategies, cloud-based technologies, as well as cloud providers, must be surely considered. So, organizations must develop good roadmaps and checklists for due diligence while they evaluate these technologies and service providers, which is important for their chances of success.
- Abusing Cloud Services or Their Wicked Use: Poorly deployed cloud services that are not secured and fraudulent sign-ups of accounts in cloud-based computing models can lead to security issues in cloud computing and malicious attacks as the bad elements may leverage these cloud resources for targeting users, enterprises, or maybe even cloud service providers.