Cloud Security: Staying One Step Ahead of Attackers

Cloud security now plays a key role in every major digital transformation initiative, and this will only accelerate in the future. By 2023, as more enterprises adopt the cloud, we will see cloud security trends that are currently emerging or may become more important in the coming years. Some of the key trends include:

The cloud will increasingly become the foundation for security, with management intelligence at its core: Given the increasing scale and sophistication of attacks, many organizations will move to cloud-based security delivery models as they realize that on-premises software will not be able to maintain The speed required in today's hybrid environment. The combined market for cloud access security brokers (CASB) and cloud workload protection platforms (CWPP) is expected to grow by 26.8%.

As remote working remains the preferred model going forward, demand for cloud-based detection and response solutions will also increase in the coming years. The cloud will become the foundation for ensuring maximum security, and we will see more businesses transition to the cloud.

Multi-cloud environments will increase cloud security risks: The increasing adoption of multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments may lead to increased security complexity, as organizations need to ensure that their security controls and policies remain consistent across all cloud environments. Data security concerns are amplified in multi-cloud environments. The complexity of multi-cloud environments ranks as the most significant internal challenge to cloud security. Additionally, since different cloud service providers have different operational and security controls within public cloud providers, this will also have an impact on the overall security posture and defense against security threats.

Cloud data sprawl can lead to security and compliance-related issues: The relative ease of access to cloud-based storage can lead to uncontrolled and difficult-to-manage data sprawl. In many cases, the data that must be deleted or protected goes unregulated because the organization is unaware of their existence. For example, in April 2022, cloud data security company Cyera discovered unmanaged data storage copies as well as snapshot or log data. Researchers at the company found that 60% of data security issues in cloud data storage are caused by unsecured sensitive data. The researchers further observed that more than 30% of scanned cloud data stores were ghost data, with more than 58% of ghost data stores containing sensitive or very sensitive data.

If this data is left unprotected, it not only increases the threat of ransomware attacks, but also increases the risk of non-compliance with industry regulations such as HIPAA or PCI-DSS. This is further confirmed by the Cloud Data Security Report, which states that only 4% of respondents believe their cloud data is sufficiently secure. This trend is expected to accelerate as more businesses adopt cloud-based solutions.

Data breaches in the cloud will accelerate: The sheer volume of data stored in the cloud today significantly increases the risk. Despite best practices recommended by cloud service providers, data breaches originating from the cloud are only increasing. For example, IBM's annual Cost of a Data Breach report highlights that 45% of data breaches studied occurred in the cloud. It's also worth noting that 43% of reporting organizations said they were in the early stages or had not yet begun implementing security practices to protect their cloud environments, but were seeing higher costs of breaches.

SaaS-based misconfigurations will lead to escalating security incidents: The popularity of SaaS-based applications is growing exponentially. However, the relative ease of adoption also increases the attack surface. The number of SaaS misconfiguration security-related incidents can be as high as 63%, which is huge compared to the 17% of security incidents. Caused by IaaS misconfiguration. Unless something is checked, this area looks to be extremely vulnerable in 2024 because there is relatively little awareness of SaaS security.