5 Cloud Storage Security Risks You Need to Know About

Let’s take a closer look at the biggest cloud storage security risks so that your organization doesn’t run the risk of facing them. Ultimately, it’s your job to make the right decisions that help your organization provide resilient services. 

Cloud storage has become one of the rapidly growing segments in terms of IT spending. But, cloud security breaches constantly make news headlines for mismanagement by an unnamed third party or a misconfigured database.

The Gartner report states, “Through 2025, 90% of the organizations will fail to control public cloud use and share sensitive information.” Furthermore, cloud storage security risks will cost dearly, overspend by up to 50%.

In this blog post, we’ve curated a list of some of the common yet major cloud storage security risks that come with using cloud solutions. It also helps you deal with them if they ever happen to you. So, let’s dive right in. 

Top Cloud Storage Security Risks That You Need to Know About

1. Unauthorized Access to Data

Unauthorized third-party access to files is a well-known threat that many organizations fail to address. It is crucial to ensure that the data is accessed only by authorized individuals and for legitimate reasons only. Unauthorized access includes accessing enterprise data, networks, devices, or apps, without having proper permissions. The good thing is that poor access control can be tackled through security solutions in combination with access management policies. 

Check out some of the essential tips to prevent poor access management:

• Use third-party security tools to get lists of users, groups, and roles from cloud service environments. After that, the security team will be able to sort and analyze it; learn more about available tools.
• Keep logging and monitoring mechanisms in place to detect unauthorized changes and unusual activity.
• Last but not least, develop a data governance framework for all user accounts. The user accounts should be connected to the central directory services such as Active Directory, which can monitor and revoke access privileges.

2. Data Privacy

Besides asset tracking, the data is essential for your organization; no one should be able to access it unless you allow them to. With cloud storage getting popular, storage security is also becoming a widely discussed topic. Some of the common cloud data privacy breaches stem from:

• File-based malware
• Insecure APIs
• Misconfiguration
• Weak IAM(Identity and Access Management) policies

What’s more? Cloud data breaches also include some biggest threats such as  destruction or corruption of databases, leaking of confidential information, the theft of intellectual property and regulatory requirements. According to Forbes, data breaches exposed 4.1 billion records in the first six months of 2019. Businesses of all sizes must get their security stronger. 

Being a business owner, how can you be sure that nobody can access sensitive data or information when you do not maintain the servers? So, whenever you migrate sensitive data to the cloud, there are chances that you might be losing essential privacy controls. To address this, it’s best to seek assistance from cloud migration service providers and familiarize yourself with the best practices for using cloud storage solutions. Which are as follows:

• Investing in employees’ education and training
• Acknowledging the responsibilities you share with the providers you choose.
• Developing strategies, policies, and internal effective best practices.
• Adding native data protection with extra security measures.
• Figuring out which data should be stored in the cloud.

File sharing enables you to maintain control over the most important company data while guaranteeing compliance and the highest level of security. Share private information without endangering it.

3. Lack of Backup Services

When it comes to storage systems, one of the major complaints received is that there’s no automatic backup functionality. Rather, you need to make plans to backup the data you store on the cloud yourself. Some providers avail the automatic backup functionality and help keep your data safer. But, there are also those who don’t. Make sure you choose a provider which allows automatic data backup.

 In case of an unexpected event, enterprise data backup tools will provide your organization with data protection and quick recovery by storing your data on a remote server.  

4. Rogue Devices

Another cloud storage security risk is providing the ability to employees to work on a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) basis. This trend has been in popularity since more employees prefer to use their own device at work. Owning the fact that they are more used to their interfaces or have higher specs than company-provided devices. 

Undeniably, the BYOD culture has a win-win solution for both employees and employers since it helps in saving expenses for buying IT equipment for employees and it also gives more flexibility to employees. But, you can’t imagine how BYOD culture brings major security risks if it is not managed properly. Lost or misused devices mean that your organization’s sensitive data & information are in the hands of a third party who could breach the company’s network and steal valuable information. Therefore, the best way to protect data and security against this threat is to ensure that the data is encrypted and transmitted over a secure connection and to prevent outsiders from accessing the cloud’s metadata.

5. Poor Incident Response

When it comes to giving responses to internal cybersecurity incidents, organizations must have their strategies in place. Organizations also must own all their internal network infrastructure, and security personnel are on-site; therefore, it is possible to lock down the incident. The main goal is to effectively manage the incident so that the damage is limited, plus some factors like recovery time, costs, and collateral damage (brand reputation) are kept at a minimum. 

Above all, if the company wants to prevent data breaches, a practice should be followed to have a comprehensive incident plan that embraces cloud security. 

Conclusion

The cloud environment has been rapidly changing since its emergence. It also makes it difficult to detect and respond to threats quickly. Cloud assessment helps in identifying and mitigating security risks in cloud computing. It helps identify several major security threats such as data breaches, lack of cloud security architecture and strategy, misconfiguration & inadequate change control, account hijacking, and insecure interface & APIs.

Moreover, implementing a cloud strategy can give your team a clear and shared idea of your business objectives and best practices when working with information online. On the other hand, the above-mentioned cloud storage risks can emerge as issues like misalignment, scalability challenges, productivity slowdowns, and security gaps. These security risks could put your whole organization at risk. 

You need to develop an effective strategy that includes standard guidelines and practices for your business. It should be a document that changes with your business needs and your cloud services.