Public Cloud Risks - Is Your Organization Prepared for Cloud Threats?

Introduction

The dawn of cloud computing created endless business opportunities for organizations seeking substantial growth by delivering a flawless user experience backed with robust security.

Regardless of the niche, enterprises are now leveraging the public cloud to its full potential and ability to stay ahead of the competition.

Moreover, public clouds have significantly increased the deployment of virtual machines since it offers flexibility and is quite affordable, even for startups and small enterprises.

However, the rapid adoption of the public and hybrid cloud doesn’t necessarily mean that sensitive information stored on remote servers or shared clouds is secure.

A recent survey revealed that phishing is one of the most common cloud attacks, with 73% of respondents agreeing that their organization faced a phishing attack.

And phishing is just one risk; plenty of other underlying risks can affect your cloud security.

Hence, businesses must understand the risks associated with public cloud security and take timely action to avoid financial and reputational losses.

Let’s understand the risks associated with the public cloud and how businesses can take timely action to avoid the risks.

Risks Associated with Public Cloud Infrastructures

Since several risks can impact a business, here’s the list of some of the most common risks that every business should be aware of:

#1. Lack of data control.

One of the biggest challenges with the public cloud infrastructure is that the data is stored outside the enterprise’s IT environment. And this can be pretty risky from an information security perspective.

Hence, most public cloud providers suggest enterprises create backups of their sensitive information to deal with any risky situation.

Besides, privacy risks, especially in shared cloud infrastructure, can't be overlooked. And the sensitive data is beyond the control of the organization.

So, businesses need to invest in cloud security best practices, including multi-factor authentication (MFA) and risk-based authentication (RBA).

#2. Shared access data privacy risks.

Since most enterprises aren’t relying on renowned cloud providers, including Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, the risk of data privacy and identity theft lingers.

Moreover, cybercriminals are always searching for ways to breach security by bypassing the poor line of defense. In a nutshell, they exploit destructive authentication mechanisms.

So, how should an organization protect the privacy and security of its consumer information? Users may be misusing their account verification. It's in these cases that the Zero Trust Model works.

The zero trust model believes no user can be trusted, and verification is no longer an option. It supports the theory that all users must be authenticated, authorized, and regularly verified to ensure they can be trusted with the data in any business hierarchy.

#3. Availability risks.

Another major issue that can affect the overall security of your cloud is connection failures and cloud server downtime.

Many businesses have faced DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks in the last couple of years, leading to identity theft and financial and reputational damages. And the number of such attacks is surging exponentially.

DDoS attacks are pretty common in private cloud infrastructure, and one robust way to avoid such attacks is to choose servers offering 100% uptime.

A cloud-based CIAM (customer identity and access management) solution like LoginRadius, has set up automated failover systems in all layers of our architecture, which is why it ensures 99.99% uptime every month.

Final Thoughts

The increasing number of enterprises leveraging the cloud has increased the risk of data breaches and identity thefts.

Businesses considering leveraging the private cloud shouldn’t overlook the security aspects and must consider relying on n robust security infrastructure.

Enterprises thinking about accelerating business growth through cloud adoption shouldn't miss the aspects above.