Cloud Solutions & Cyber Security

The popularity of cloud services has been growing rapidly in recent years. The promise of savings on capital and operating expenses, as well as scalability and elasticity, have prompted companies to move to the cloud. However, the transition to the cloud comes with a lot of challenges. One of them, security, is a huge issue for organizations that want to move to the cloud. 

Data security 

Security plays an important role for many organizations when moving to the cloud. Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) keep the exact location of their data centers a secret. Although this is the best practice in physical security, many potential customers are afraid of not knowing the location of their data and are turning away from cloud services. 

Information sovereignty also plays a big role in the transition to the cloud. Companies don't want to lose access to data due to legal complications. Compliance with regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is one of the key concerns for companies. Violation of the GDPR and other regulations entails large financial penalties, which most organizations want to avoid. For this reason, many organizations prefer to store sensitive data (personal information, etc.) locally. 

But data loss prevention (DLP) systems are critical to the organization. Accidental deletion of data can occur on the part of the organization. A Service Level Agreement (SLA) may refer to the CSP's assistance in recovering systems and information. If the CSP fails to meet the SLA, the client will suffer a big loss. Therefore, organizations want to be sure that their backups are safe, because in the event of data loss or corruption, they need to restore data within recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO). 

Choosing one CSP over another is not always an easy decision. Some cloud service providers can make it difficult for an organization to migrate to other providers. Before choosing a CSP, a company should carefully review the cloud service terms of use of a particular CSP. 

Lack of due diligence can slow down the response of security services to cyberattacks. Most CSPs operate under a shared responsibility model when it comes to cloud security, so it is critical for cloud customers to understand their role and that of the CSP in this model. Cyber-attacks are inevitable, so companies need to have incident response plans in place and be confident in how providers protect themselves. 

When evaluating a public cloud option, a company should understand that this model uses a multi-user license to reduce costs. Service customers need to be confident in CSP and defense-in-depth methods because the lack of multi-layered protection will allow a hacker to launch a series of cyberattacks after one successful attempt. 

Main Threats 

Denial of Service Attacks 

Companies running mission-critical services in the cloud can be severely affected by DoS and DDoS attacks that paralyze business operations. To minimize the risk of such attacks, companies should strive to eliminate single points of failure when provisioning workloads. 

Insecure APIs 

Most tasks for provisioning, managing, orchestrating, and monitoring workloads in the cloud are performed through API calls. Therefore, the importance of reliable APIs should not be underestimated, because the security and availability of shared cloud services depend on them. Lack of well-configured authorization, access control, and API monitoring can lead to various breaches and devastating hacker attacks. 

Natural disasters 

The possibility of a natural disaster, although not an attack, is still an event that disrupts cloud services. If a natural disaster destroys CSP data centers, it will cause severe disruption to businesses using data centers, because even with advanced backup methods, in the event of a natural disaster, the risk of information loss is quite high. 

SUMMARY 

Moving to the cloud is an important but risky business decision that requires a good assessment of the pros and cons. It can cause irreparable damage to a company, but with careful security and risk assessment, it can make cloud services a great tool for company growth. A reliable provider can help make an informed risk-free decision.