Top 8 Cloud Vulnerabilities

[A] What are cloud vulnerabilities?

Attackers or unauthorized users may leverage cloud vulnerabilities—weaknesses, oversights, or holes in cloud infrastructure—to enter an organization's environment and possibly inflict harm. Because the cloud is a very dynamic and dispersed environment, businesses who use cloud hosting for computing and storage run a higher risk of having their cloud services attacked. According to the Crowd Strike 2024 Global Threat Report, breaches into cloud environments increased by 75% in 2023.

The study also found that the number of cases involving cloud-conscious threat actors—those who know they can breach cloud workloads and utilize that information to exploit cloud-specific features—has increased by 110%. Threat actors frequently use technologies that the business has authorized to carry out their assault after gaining legitimate credentials to access a victim's cloud environment. If customer data is compromised due to poor cloud vulnerability management, it can result in a loss of revenue and harm to one's reputation. The eight most significant cloud vulnerabilities that your company may encounter are discussed in this article along with mitigation advice.

[B] What are the most common cloud vulnerabilities?

The top eight cloud vulnerabilities include:

Cloud misconfigurations

Insecure APIs

Lack of visibility

Shadow IT

Poor access management

Malicious insiders

Zero-day vulnerabilities

Human error

1.?Misconfigured cloud

One of the most frequent vulnerabilities that organizations encounter is cloud misconfigurations. The pace of deployment, a lack of thorough understanding of best practices, or a lack of complete insight into cloud infrastructure are frequently the causes of misconfigurations, which can range from excessive account rights to unsafe backups.

To lessen this danger:

To swiftly find configuration errors that provide an active risk in production, use third-party solutions to scan your infrastructure.

Make sure your cloud resource's data storage is always set to private by default.

Make sure you have a defined procedure for reviewing IaC files before utilizing Terraform or any other infrastructure as code (IaC) framework.

Instead than using HTTP, always use HTTPS. The same is true for every other protocol; for instance, SFTP is a better option than FTP. Additionally, you want to use the most recent SSL/TLS version.

Limit all incoming and outgoing ports that aren't required for a particular internet-facing computer.

Use a secure secrets management solution (like AWS Secrets Manager) to keep secrets like passwords and API keys in one location and only one location.

2.?Unsecure APIs

Because they are utilized in microservices, applications, and website backends, APIs are widely used in contemporary software development. They have to deal with demands from bots, spammers, and hackers in addition to requests from mobile devices, apps, webpages, and third parties. For this reason, minimizing your attack surface requires a secure API.

There are several ways that malicious API queries can appear. Among the most prevalent are:

Injection of code and queries (command injection, SQL injection)

Tampering with parameters

There are a few simple actions you can do on your own to reduce API security threats, but many cloud providers have in-house solutions for safeguarding APIs.

To lessen this danger:

Use a web application firewall (WAF) to identify code injection attacks and filter requests based on IP addresses or HTTP header information. WAFs also allow you to define response limitations for each user or other metrics.

Use input sanitization and validation.

Make use of throttle and rate limitation.

Adhere to the data minimization principle.

Unlimited uploads of files

3.?Lack visibility

The size of your infrastructure grows together with your usage of cloud services. It can be challenging to keep track of how cloud services are connected to one another or determine which ones are currently in production when businesses are using thousands of instances. It must be simple and convenient to see the condition of your complete infrastructure.

Finding the source of a vulnerability is like trying to identify a needle in a haystack, hence a big problem that makes it difficult to take action on a threat is a lack of visibility into cloud infrastructure. Given that DevOps teams own cloud resources and apps and security teams have insight into risk, both teams need to have constant visibility into their real-time cloud security posture.

To lessen this danger:

Make sure you can see your cloud security posture in real time and continuously.

Use technologies like the cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP), a one-stop shop that makes it easier to monitor, identify, and fix possible threats and vulnerabilities to cloud security.

4. Shadow IT

Shadow IT, which is the practice of producing cloud resources or any other digital asset without the appropriate authority from the IT department, is one of the primary reasons why enterprises lack visibility into their cloud infrastructure. When businesses grow quickly, shadow IT is common because workers may circumvent the approval procedure to reduce interference with daily operations.

Because unauthorized assets are frequently not adequately secured owing to carelessness, shadow IT poses security threats. For instance, employees may retain default passwords or misconfigured systems because these assets were established outside of an authorized process.

To lessen this danger:

Identify and comprehend organizational needs by conducting audits on a regular basis throughout the company.

Make use of ongoing, real-time monitoring to see and manage every device you own.

Make sure the business maintains compliance by establishing appropriate security policies and enforcing them on any newly developed resources.

5. Inadequate management of access

Cloud systems frequently run the danger of having insecure identity and access management (IAM). On a broad scale, it happens when users or services have access to resources that they shouldn't have or shouldn't require. Account hijacking and other adversary exploitations might result from inadequate access management.

Through the use of tactics like phishing, keylogging, brute-force attacks, and cross-site scripting (XSS), threat actors try to obtain sensitive credentials in an attack known as account hijacking. In order to compromise data and processes, attackers might potentially introduce malicious software into cloud services.

To lessen this danger:

Apply the least privilege approach to all of your cloud resources and users; if a service only requires read access or access to a subset of a resource, never provide it full access.

IAM policy misconfiguration can be scanned and detected using third-party technologies; a CNAPP can help make a misconfiguration more visible.

Since access needs evolve over time, it is important to regularly review credentials and access.

To make sure that an extra layer of verification is needed to access systems (for example, by using a physical phone number or email address), implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) throughout your company.

To balance security and user experience, require risk-based multi-factor authentication for all employees who have been given cloud access to their accounts and data.

6. Malicious insiders

Insider threats, sometimes referred to as malicious insiders, are cybersecurity dangers that originate from within the company and typically take the shape of a disgruntled or careless employee. These malevolent insiders can access your cloud accounts in a few different ways. For instance, they can access your accounts if a former employee still has valid login credentials.

A successful phishing attack and/or inadequate credential protection (e.g., if an employee has an overly simple password or a password is shared between accounts) might potentially allow malicious insiders to access your cloud services through account hijacking. This type of vulnerability can be especially harmful since intellectual property is also vulnerable to theft or alteration, in addition to data.

To lessen this danger:

Verify that MFA is turned on.

Automate the process of filtering out phishing emails.

Inform staff members about phishing scams.

Verify that staff members are using secure passwords.

7. Zero-day vulnerabilities

A zero-day vulnerability is a software or security defect for which there isn't a patch or solution. As a result, many antivirus programs and other signature-based threat detection technologies are unable to identify these kinds of vulnerabilities. Attackers may try to achieve remote code execution, exfiltrate confidential information, or prevent authorized users from using their cloud services after they have successfully exploited the vulnerability.

To lessen this danger:

Update all endpoints' software on a regular basis.

Sort patching efforts according to the importance of the risk.

Use behavior-based real-time attack blocking techniques.

8. Human mistake

According to the Thales Global Cloud Security Study, 44% of recorded events involving cloud data breaches were caused by human activity. Misconfigurations and problems with access management are only two examples of the various ways these faults can manifest. Poor strategic planning or a lack of awareness about security best practices are the main causes of many of these vulnerabilities.

To lessen this danger:

Educate your managers, sysadmins, and DevOps team on best practices for cloud security.

Teach staff members how to recognize a phishing email.

To reduce the possibility of public data storage misconfiguration, abide by a few fundamental guidelines. Keep accurate records of security needs and procedures.

Assess cloud service providers' security posture and comprehend the shared responsibility paradigm.

Create an incident response plan so that everyone is aware of their responsibilities in the event of an emergency.

Keep abreast of the most prevalent weaknesses in all of your systems, both internal and external.

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