How is Cloud Security coping in today’s climate?

Now more than ever, the level of sophistication needed for the security of cloud networks is higher than ever. And the need for more creative and innovative security solutions has risen exponentially. But to begin, what exactly is cloud security, and to what extent does it influence our daily lives?

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Cloud security could primarily be thought of as an element of cybersecurity that pertains specifically to maintaining the confidentiality, integrity and availability of data, applications and services located on servers controlled partially or entirely by one or more third parties. While businesses that keep their data on-site often feel as though they have more control over its security, the flaw in that plan is usually a lack of in-house expertise. The cyber-skills gap is widely documented, leaving almost half of UK businesses unable to deal with even basic security tasks. While the cloud does not inherently provide additional risk, it remains a target for cybercriminals. Many organisations that adopted working from home practices during the government stay-at-home orders have operated remotely. COVID-19 has undoubtedly amplified the susceptibility of organisations to such attacks. Back in the beginning of 2020, as hackers scrabbled to take advantage of the pandemic, cloud-based attacks rose by 630% between January and April.

Some sectors have taken a trade-off approach to cyber-attack risk by weighing the cost of putting in place effective security controls against the lower cost of paying a cyber insurance premium. As a result, insurance companies are being hit hard covering ransom payments. The kind of problems with bugs, provider-side security issues, misconfigured images and attacks on MSPs, can only really be managed via proper visibility and control over your workloads. Bugs that allow Linux container escapes are best addressed by deploying behavioural detection capabilities on the workloads themselves. Therefore, workload Protection that can provide EDR and runtime protection for your cloud servers is essential.

It’s therefore important that businesses seek out a vendor they can trust, with the knowledge and expertise to best secure their sensitive data. Equally important is that businesses educate their employees on best-practice protocols and procedures – human error remains one of the biggest causes of data breaches. Such a solution needs to be lightweight so that it does not impact performance, and ideally it should offer functionality such as a secure remote shell, node firewall control, network isolation and file fetching.

Working from home: Cloud technology saving the day