Limit your Vulnerability: Four Common Cloud Security Issues

By Ajit Singh, Lepide Software

Security is one of the biggest concerns that CIOs fance in the modern enterprise environment. Modern enterprise IT is transforming rapidly,  and new technologies such as cloud computing has blessed users with new capabilities such as greater scalability and flexibility. But with new technologies come new security concerns, and  IT departments should rethink about their security methodologies so as to keep networks and confidential data secure.

In this changing face of IT, using traditional security approaches with its main focus on software and hardware is very outmoded—something more progressive is needed. But, before implementing any new strategy, one must understand the risks and challenges associated with cloud security.

Avoiding these four common cloud security issues that is integral to the security and success of a cloud-based project.

1. Lack of Security Perceptibility and Risk Cognizance in Companies.  

As businesses are expanding their global networks, the requirements for safe and compliant environment are also expanding. When it comes to cloud security appropriate awareness of security risks is one of the most imperative aspects.It’s extremely important to maintain a proper balance between cost, control, and visibility when using public cloud services.

For better control and visibility, more and more information should be recorded in your applications. Systems should be set up to generate alerts in case of any suspicious or malicious activity befalling in your database such as unauthorized file modification, increased frequency of data change, more resource usage than usual, etc.

2. Even Private Clouds are Vulnerable.

Many organizations moving to cloud-based infrastructure have done so by adopting private cloud solutions, rather than multi-tenant public cloud infrastructure. To the layman, this may seem like the most secure approach— businesses get the benefits of cloud computing, but keep sensitive data  “behind their walls” so as to shelter their data effectively. But, organizations need to understand that building a cloud inside their firewall won’t make their data safe and secure—even a single fish is enough to taint the whole pond.

If you are looking for a risk-free solution, simply avoiding public clouds won’t solve your problem, instead consider creating a secure cloud fortified with all security controls that are missing from the public environment. Incident response can be very instant in private clouds since they are owned by companies itself. Detection proficiencies should be cloud-specific whereas operational proficiencies such as patch management should be shrill. Due to shared nature of cloud resources, a susceptible service that’s in a cloud might have inordinate exposure and threat than the same service in an ordinary server farm.

Store Sensitive Information in a Safer Storage.

Storing your data is the toughest problem one can ever face in cloud computing. Although, it’s true that you can encrypt your data, but again it’s tough to know where and how to encrypt it. The basic thing needed for successful encryption in the cloud is; never ever store the encryption key with the encrypted data. Doing so can make your data more vulnerable to attacks.

In shared environments, integrity of guest users is still a big question. No one is offering virtual machine solution for its guarantee.  This means a malevolent program could be monitoring the guest’s encryption-decryption logic.

Few organizations encrypt in the cloud, instead they encode it before it reaches the cloud service. This benefits the organization only if they’re using a customer resource management (CRM) system from its offices, or from a business where all users either are at head office or using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) into headquarters before linking to the cloud service.

On the other hand, various organizations make applications that proxy data. leaving on the way to a cloud service and encode or tokenize it before sending it to the cloud. This way, they don’t have to worry much about data loss, assuming that they are sending data behind that applications.

Robust Authorization and Validation is Needed.

Though these two terms has the utmost number of commercial solutions available, but that doesn’t mean every issue will get solved. Every organization has their own way to manage authorization and authentication.

The very first step is to determine whether your present authentication system possess the ability to work in a secure and reliable way for users in a cloud environment or not. If the answer is yes, then you must determine the best way to authenticate cloud services

Whether an authentication system assimilates with the enterprise’s active directory and works as discrete, it must be very adaptable and security administrators must be able to effortlessly add support for new services.

 Conclusion:

Whenever it is about business, securing your IT infrastructure is imminent; be it for your own data and technology or your clientele’s. As businesses are slowly taking the plunge or better say the flight towards cloud hosted solutions, it is very necessary to ensure that you follow an integrated security approach which is opposite to the bolt-on security enactments of the past.Cloud solutions are scalable and it grows with your business and so does your security plans need too.

About the Author: Ajit Singh is a Manager of Marketing Operations with Lepide Software Pvt. Ltd. Lepide Software is the global provider of network management products to organizations of every scale be it a company, organization or any level of industry. We are a full service, professionally managed software developing organization thriving to offer best-possible software utilities for organizations and administrators so that they can conduct network management with ease and comfort. Our wide array of network management solutions ensure ease in working and monitoring thereby offering the administrator access to cumulative reports of the tracked activities.  https://www.lepide.com/