Cloud Services Are Here to Stay

Not long ago the cloud was touted as among the more secure realms of the Internet. Within the span of a few short years, cloud services have grown increasingly popular, with organizations recognizing the efficiencies and resilience in leveraging these decentralized data stores. Newer organizations are becoming cloud-native, with no on-premise servers (other than local print servers and other communication essentials) or infrastructure like companies of the past.

“The shift to remote work has also facilitated a heavy push to cloud-based services. The ease of use and setup is making the migration to the cloud an easy decision for many companies, especially smaller companies who do not want to leverage a large staff to maintain on-premise systems,” says NetDiligence Security Advisor Jason Rebholz.

Why the Cloud Might Be the Next Frontier of Cybersecurity

With so many users migrating to the cloud, it was only a matter of time before secure cloud hosting gave way to security issues in cloud computing.

“We are currently seeing reports of security incidents in the cloud begin to trickle in,” says Rebholz. “Over time, as organizations shift to the cloud, so will the attacks. We expect that data breaches will continue as cloud-based systems are compromised and data is stolen or leaked online.”

One example was the Log4Shell vulnerability, which put 93 percent of all enterprise cloud environments at risk. Another major concern is the Internet of Things (IoT), where an untold number of vulnerabilities may leave cloud data at risk. Indeed, cloud security has become its own rapidly growing discipline of IT security.

Using the Cloud Safely

“It’s important to remember that cloud computing security is a shared security model,” Rebholz says. “That means that the cloud hosting provider, such as Amazon or Microsoft, will handle only a portion of what it takes to secure your cloud environment. The majority of security configuration falls to your organization. As a result, organizations must take the proper steps to set up their cloud environments securely and monitor for ‘drift’ away from those secure configurations.”

One of the most commonplace vulnerabilities are misconfigured cloud settings. The most important one to watch out for is the public/private setting for cloud resources, which can lead to unintended disclosure of sensitive information or a data breach.

With the onus for cloud data protection on the contracted user, it’s crucial to take the necessary steps to configure and assess the security of any cloud environment. An easy way to do so, Rebholz says, is to leverage a Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) tool. These tools continuously assess the cloud environment for common configuration gaps that could lead to a security incident.

Lastly, if you have concerns about your own organization’s cloud security or other network systems, it may be time to consider NetDiligence’s QuietAudit Cyber Risk Assessments. This line of solutions include External Vulnerability Scan Testing as a way to effectively stress-test your systems and find out just how vulnerable your organization may be to cyber threats.

If you’re unsure if you need this service, take a moment to ask yourself the following questions:

• Has your organization ever tested its external network systems to see if they are reasonably patched and hardened to prevent most threats? If yes, when was the last time you performed such tests?
• Does your organization actively understand, maintain, and improve the current status of its critical IT infrastructure?
• If breached, can your organization afford potentially weeks or months of business interruption while the issue was resolved and systems were being recovered?

If you answered “no” to any of the questions above, we recommend running a scan.

Learn more about QuietAudit here and use the form on the page to get started.