Current IT Trends and Cloud Security Threats 2018

Potential Threats Centered on Cloud Security 2018

In the Cloud threats still obliterate any crystal clear vision with regards to cloud Security in 2018, thus calling for best data safeguarding practices to be followed. The current year 2018 again showcases an ongoing trend of continued threats to small enterprises, who still need to spend major IT resources to ensure the security of their cloud networks. 

There are ever-evolving trends in relation to how efficiently enterprises use their cloud resources, storing and sharing their data over the cloud, managing cloud-based applications, so on and so forth. Every single cloud network now has well-defined threats and challenges to enterprise security. Cybercriminals have been spotted targeting the cloud networks, which are blessed with relatively high volumes of data, especially in the public domain. 

These ever-growing challenges to cloud security are likely to increase, with this year being no different to the previous one, as big cloud networks remain on the top-rated task list for cybercriminals. Even the most secured cloud networks cannot be deemed to be perfectly secured since the new-age cyber technology is feeding the ill-intents of such criminals to commit the same crime, only differently. Below are some of the major cloud security threats in 2018 and how to counteract each one of those with precision.

• Inadequate Screening of Cloud Service Providers: Enterprise owners must screen a good number of cloud service providers, and meticulously explore their offerings. It is at the point of first interaction with them, before even selecting them as your cloud service provider, that the issue of cloud security should be discussed and detailed upon. If you are not sure what security features you are entitled to along with cloud services, you must do good research, or screen the entire cloud-based services on offer meticulously in order to be able to make the final call.

• Shared Technology Vulnerability: Cloud service providers usually provide their service scalabilities via various sharing platforms, different applications and/or infrastructure. They tend to share their products including SaaS or “software-as-a-service” with no such alterations made to existing software or hardware. That is usually done at the price paid by overall enterprise cloud security.
  
  In most such cases, the types of infrastructural elements that support cloud-based services are not designed in a way where they have strong isolation power for multiple customer applications or multi-tenant architectures. This usually results in a vulnerability with shared technology, which can be very well exploited by all of the existing provisioning models.

• Accountability for Data Security: Most of the enterprises working with huge cloud networks consider their data to be safe as it is being stored over the cloud and have formed an impression that cloud service providers are doing their part to keep the data safe, but this is not always true. The service-level agreements with these providers often do not undertake the task of keeping cloud data safe.
  
  Your enterprise will simply be connected to cloud resources, but your data remains unsafe. Enterprises have to view accountability as a shared responsibility, by keeping some aspects to themselves while designating the rest to the cloud service provider. There can also be a mutual SLA (Service Level Agreement) between the enterprise and cloud service provider for shared accountability.

• Mitigating Malicious Intents of Insiders: Enterprises can never be sure about the intent of their own employees accessing the cloud systems, and thus any ill-intents of a few people from within a large organization cannot be entirely ruled out. For this, many enterprises are turning on to procure a robust CASB (Cloud Access Security Brokers) type solution, which can impose greater restrictions and place the necessary checks and balances within the vast cloud network.

• Limited Options to Ensure Cloud Security: The lack of know-how about the tools to ensure cloud security and also the lack of options in terms of finding the right tool itself are two major challenges that deepen the potential threats to cloud security for enterprises. A robust and thoroughly customizable CASB solution is needed to strengthen the cloud security and to make your cloud operations foolproof.

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