Did you know that 98% of enterprises have experienced a cloud security breach in the last 18 months? Yes, you read that right. According to an IDC survey of 200 CISOs, 98% of organizations have experienced a cloud security breach in the last 1.5 years. The number previously stood at 79% last year, which translates into a 19% increase over last year.

Yes, these are alarming numbers but despite this very few security leaders put more emphasis on cloud security. Even those who do pay attention fail to understand the factors that are negatively hampering their cloud security. If you are one of those that belong to a later camp, this article is for you.

In this article, Anti-Dos will learn about three key factors that are negatively impacting cloud security and how you can get over them.

3 Factors Affecting Cloud Security

Here are three key factors that are negatively impacting cloud security.

1.    Cloud Infrastructure Complexity

Cloud misconfiguration is one of the main reasons behind cloud data breaches. As your cloud security infrastructure continues to grow, complexity increases. When the complexity of your cloud infrastructure increases, it increases the risk of cloud misconfiguration. What’s even worse is that it is much harder to track those cloud misconfigurations. This means that your security team doesn't have the same level of visibility that they once had when the infrastructure is simpler. 

The same holds true for multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments..In a hybrid or multi-cloud environment, your data might be stored and processed in different places. This makes it difficult to manage as you will have to make sense of a sophisticated network of connections in order to reduce the risk of misconfiguration which is not easy.

2.    Interconnectivity of Apps

As mentioned above, the more connections you have, the more complication it will create. This also applies to cloud apps. As the number of third-party integrations and app components communicating with each other grows so does the level of complexity of your cloud infrastructure. The more complex a cloud infrastructure might be, the higher the risk of misconfiguration.

Keep an eye on API-related errors such as broken authorization at an object, user, and function levels. Make sure that you are not giving too much information in your application programming interfaces as it can also be abused by cybercriminals. 

This information can tell hackers where the vulnerabilities lie and they can easily exploit them. If you think that cloud-based containerized apps are safe then, that’s not true. In fact, they can be more vulnerable as they can give attackers access to your entire technology stacks once they manage to successfully compromise your containerized apps.

3.    Introducing New Features Quickly

You might be wondering if pushing out new features faster could be a good thing as it can give you a competitive advantage over your competitors. Yes, that might be true but there is another side to this that nobody tells you about. One of the biggest problems with pushing out new features faster is poor quality. They won’t spend too much time on testing as a result, errors don’t get ironed out. Due to this, they make their way into the final release which ruins the user experience for end-users.

When you put pressure on developers to develop features quickly, they will look for shortcuts and workarounds to get things done. In some cases, this move could backfire. For instance, if they are opening new ports for communications in apps, they could forget to close them, which allows hackers an easy entry into your apps. These cybercriminals can then use it as a ladder to move laterally through your network and target more critical and sensitive business data.

How To Minimize The Cloud Security Risk?

After discussing factors that could negatively impact your cloud security, let’s look at some of the solutions that can help you minimize your cloud security risk. Here are some of the ways you can use to reduce your cloud security risk.

1.    Schedule Manual and Automated Checks

To detect cloud misconfiguration, it is imperative to run periodic manual and automated checks. If your cloud infrastructure is simple, checking for misconfigurations manually is enough. Meanwhile, if the complexity of your cloud infrastructure is higher, you will have to conduct frequent automated tests so no misconfigurations could slip through the cracks. 

The frequency of these checks usually depends on the number of changes and configurations you make to your cloud infrastructure on a daily basis. Let’s say, you configure and make changes frequently then, you should also run these checks frequently. You can also invest in security tools such as DDoS protected DNS for additional protection.

2.    Look Out For Configuration Issues

The problem with the manual approach is that it is not scalable. It can work until your cloud infrastructure is quite small and limited but as soon as it grows, you will have to create custom scripts to run those tests automatically. The real challenge occurs if cyberattackers manage to find and exploit a vulnerability before you can even scan for it. How can you deal with such a situation? 

That is why it is important to keep looking out for these misconfiguration issues. The more proactive you are at identifying these misconfigurations the better it is for your cloud security.

3.    Establish a Constant Monitoring Mechanism

Let’s say you have a complicated cloud infrastructure with hundreds of connections. Additionally, you tend to make frequent changes to your cloud infrastructure and the risk of cloud misconfiguration is much higher. How would you mitigate the risk in such a situation? 

The best approach is to establish a system that can help you monitor these changes and configurations in real-time. Just like a log management system, this can help you identify a misconfiguration as soon as it occurs and you can act quickly before the damage has been done. The faster you could act, the more chances you have to minimize the cloud security risk.

Which factor hampered the effectiveness of your cloud security systems? Share it with us in the comments section below.