Top Five Cloud Security Challenges
2020 was most definitely the year of the cloud. The Coronavirus pandemic paved the way for a significant boost in cloud adoption. Businesses who were once sceptical quickly realised its benefits, particularly when managing teams remotely.
And its growth, globally, is only expected to increase this year, in fact Gartner forecasts that worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is forecast to grow 18.4% in 2021.
But, as we know only too well, with growth and expansion come challenges and cloud is no exception. Over the last year, with more and more people adopting cloud services, there have inevitably been some challenges, namely surrounding its security.
Here we look at what, in our opinion, are the top five security challenges facing businesses when leveraging cloud computing.
Data Breaches
A breach of sensitive data is one of the top cyber concerns for businesses, it’s something no business wants to become victim of and a reason many remain unsure about cloud adoption. Very few businesses have resources or strategies in place to tackle a data breach should it happen so proper cloud security needs to be put in place before any cloud migration takes place.
Failure to deal with data properly not only opens a business up to a breach but also huge compliance risks such as penalties, fines and serious violations of customer trust.
Before considering cloud adoption, businesses should first consider their security.
Lack of Expertise
Many businesses are avoiding the cloud because they don’t believe their I.T. departments have the knowledge and experience to manage it correctly. Managing numerous clouds within an organisation adds layers of complexity which require technical expertise. Without this expertise, businesses are opening themselves up to hackers and potential data breaches.
We anticipate that over the coming months and years, technical cloud skills will be required within an I.T. role in order to fill this gap in knowledge, or more businesses will opt to outsource.
If your company lacks the expertise to manage your cloud adoption, get in touch to see how we can help: contact@claritas-solutions.com.
Lack of Cloud Security Architecture and Strategy
In 2020, many organisations have migrated portions of their IT infrastructure to public clouds.
This transition could be a gateway for cybercriminals, without the implementation of appropriate security architecture to withstand cyberattacks, data could be exposed.
Unfortunately, cloud migration isn’t as simple as a ‘lift-and-shift’ job of simply porting your existing I.T. stack and security controls to a cloud environment. This lack of understanding of the shared security responsibility model could be another contributing factor to potential threats.
Cloud Migration Issues
The pandemic has certainly put pressure on I.T. professionals across the world, with many struggling to keep up to pace with the change in applications. This added pressure ultimately results in cloud migration issues.
Many businesses want to do everything now, but, when it comes to migrating to the cloud, a simple, straight-forward migration strategy will help eliminate any mistakes. The migration process should be broken down into stages to reduce the risk of critical errors that could corrupt data and/or lead to vulnerabilities.
Insider Threat
In 2018, the Netwrix Cloud Security Report indicated that 58% of companies attribute security breaches to insiders. With insider negligence being the cause for most security incidents.
Some of the common situations caused by employees include misconfigured cloud servers, employees storing sensitive data on personal devices, or systems and falling prey to phishing emails that lead to malicious attacks.
Make sure your business understands the challenges of cloud security before making that move.
Any security risks to add to our list? Let us know by getting in touch on our social media channels.
