Top 11 Cloud Security Challenges in 2023
Published: 2023-08-16 12:41:44

Cloud computing offers data backup and restoration, redundancy, collaboration, accessibility, and cost over on-premise data centers.  However, cloud security issues remain the biggest hurdle to all its efficiency. These vulnerabilities can lead to data breaches, illegal access, service outages, and sensitive data loss if not handled properly.

The main problem with cloud security is that many businesses fail to distinguish between the responsibilities of cloud service providers (CSPs) and their own, thus failing to implement the necessary cloud security measures.

The “2023 Cloud Security Challenges Report” from Cybersecurity Insiders shows that cloud consumers still prioritize security despite cloud computing's rapid adoption. 76% of cybersecurity specialists are concerned about public cloud security. This essay explores complex [cloud security](https://nioyatech.com/what-is-cloud-security/) issues. We will explain how cyber attacks are changing and what organizations can do to defend their cloud systems. 


## Top 11 Cloud Security Challenges
 
The “[Top Threats to Cloud Computing: The Pandemic 11](https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/press-releases/2022/06/07/cloud-security-alliance-s-top-threats-to-cloud-computing-pandemic-11-report-finds-traditional-cloud-security-issues-becoming-less-concerning/)” report was issued in June by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA). According to a working group of experts, including engineers, senior programmers, and management staff, there is a shift in cloud security from information security to configuration and authentication. 

The Study reveals these 11 major cloud security challenges:

1.Insufficient identity, credentials, access, and key management
2.Insecure interfaces and APIs 
3.Misconfiguration and inadequate change control 
4.Lack of cloud security architecture and strategy 
5.Insecure software development
6.Unsecure third-party resources
7.System vulnerabilities
8.Accidental cloud data disclosure/disclosure
9.Misconfiguration and exploitation of serverless and container workloads
10.Organized crime/hackers/APT
11.Cloud storage data exfiltration


## Security Challenge 1: Insufficient Identity, Credential, Access, and Key management, Privileged Accounts

Systems for managing identities, credentials, and access are called “Identity and Access Management”, shortly IAM. IAM lets organizations control, monitor, and secure access to important assets. Modern cloud breaches are largely caused by insufficient IAM and it comes in first place in cloud security challenges list.

**How Does It Affect The Business?**
Data displacement and malicious or unauthorized user exfiltration
Financial costs associated with incident response and  Loss of market income and trust
Interruption of the supply chain
Ransomware

**A Real Life Cloud Security Challenge Sample**
The majority of the attacks in 2021 were misuse of IAM tools, and they involved Twitch, Cosmology Kozmetik, PeopleGIS, Premier Diagnostics, SeniorAdvisor, Reindeer, and Twillo.

In 2021, there were breaches including Twitch, PeopleGIS, Premier Diagnostics, and Twillo, with the majority of these incidents abusing misuse of IAM tools.

**How to Deal**
Organizations should implement two-factor authentication, follow rigorous IAM cloud restrictions, cycle their API keys often, and delete unused credentials.

## Security Challenge 2: Insecure Interfaces and APIs
 
The most common reason for incidents and data breaches is improperly configured Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and user interfaces.  Any cloud service’s security begins with how well these are protected, and both customers and [cloud service providers](https://nioyatech.com/top-9-cloud-service-providers/) are accountable for this.

**How Does It Affect The Business?**
The most common business impact is the exposure of sensitive or private data because it is not fully secured by the API. If a customer transaction API is unintentionally deployed without the necessary authentication and authorization checks, anyone using the API could view a lot of sensitive customer data.

**Examples of This Security Challenge**
In September 2018, Facebook announced that because of a vulnerability in the Facebook application programming interface (API) code for its View As feature, fifty (50 million users’ data were affected, and the access token for the API had been stolen*.

**How to Deal?**
API keys must be kept private and never used again. Rely on widely used API frameworks that are security-conscious.
Establish trusted identities and then use tokens associated with those identities to control access to services and resources.

You can authenticate traffic using a reliable API gateway, and you can also manage and track API usage.

## Security Challenge 3: Misconfiguration and Inadequate Change Control

Misconfiguration and inadequate change control come in third place on the cloud security challenges list.

Misconfigurations can be caused by a lack of system knowledge or a lack of awareness of security settings. Default configuration options and login credentials, unprotected secrets, and permissions that exceed the user’s authorization are among those errors.

**How Does It Affect The Business?**
There is even no need for a cyber attack, as misconfiguration can reveal passwords and keys. Excessive user permission causes greater application security risks.

A misconfigured database server could allow data to be accessed using a standard online search. If this data contains administrator passwords, an attacker will have access to data outside the database.

**Examples of Cloud Security Challenges**
In 2019, all NASA personnel’ identities and email addresses, their positions as allocated to projects posted on Jira, as well as ongoing NASA projects and impending milestones, were exposed as a result of these improperly configured global permissions schemes*.

**How to Deal?**
The configuration of the prod, dev, and QA environments must be the same and automated, but each environment must utilize a different set of passwords 
To find any security configuration errors or missing updates, periodically scan and audit your infrastructure
Review user permissions

## Security Challenge 4: Lack of cloud security architecture and strategy 
Organizations tend to rapidly move to the cloud to reap the benefits of cloud computing. However, they need to be aware of the risks they face and how to migrate safely to the cloud before making the switch. To have a safe [cloud infrastructure](https://nioyatech.com/beginners-guide-to-cloud-infrastructure-management/), an appropriate [cloud migration roadmap](https://nioyatech.com/how-to-create-a-cloud-strategy-roadmap/) should be used.

**How Does It Affect The Business?**
Without a good cloud strategy plan, cloud infrastructures and apps might be vulnerable to cyberattacks. 

**Examples of Security Challenges**
In 2021, online apparel store Bonobos had a significant data breach in which hackers stole 70GB of customer information by accessing a backup file on a cloud hosting network.

**How to Deal**
Robust identification controls
Automate the reactions to security events
Protect the infrastructure at all levels
Use data encryption

## Security Challenge 5: Insecure Software Development

Insecure software development comes in fifth place in the cloud security challenges list. Developers avoid creating the infrastructure and/or platform layers from scratch by giving management of those layers to [cloud service providers](https://nioyatech.com/top-9-cloud-service-providers/). 

Software Developers can concentrate on business logic by using services for Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment. CI/CD is a DevOps practice that has become one of the best practices for software development to ship software quickly and efficiently.

Even though DevOps implementation unintended functionality might appear as a result of the complexity of software development, opening the door for the development of exploits. 

**How Does It Affect The Business?**
Industries are increasingly “being operated on software and offered as online services,” from energy and healthcare to banking and communications. So developing insecure software has some consequences both financial and legal.

**Real Life Example**
In January 2021, four zero-day vulnerabilities in on-premises Microsoft Exchange Servers were found. These vulnerabilities gave attackers complete access to user emails and passwords on the vulnerable servers, administrator rights on the server, and access to connected devices on the same network. Attackers frequently set up a backdoor that gives them total access to the affected servers.

**How to Deal?**
Focus on the CSPs’ guidelines on how to deploy services in a secure manner, such as a Well-Architected Framework or secure design patterns.
By implementing the shared responsibility paradigm, some responsibilities can be owned by the CSP, rather than the business.

## Security Challenge 6: Unsecure Third-party Resources

The exploit can start at any point in the chain and spread since a product or service is the culmination of all the other products and services it uses. This indicates that a hostile hacker “just” needs to hunt for the weakest connection as a point of entry in order to accomplish their objective. 

[Using SaaS](https://nioyatech.com/what-is-software-as-a-service/) and open source to scale is standard practice in the software industry. The same opportunity for growth is given to malicious hackers, who can use the same exploit to harm more targets.

**How Does It Affect The Business?**
Key business operations and authorized access to business data are lost or stopped. A loss of income could result from any outcome.

**Example of This Security Challenge**
The breach in the supply chain that affected the SolarWinds Orion system in 2020 is referred to as the SolarWinds hack. Hackers gained access to SolarWinds’s customer IT systems, which they used to add more malware and spy on other businesses and organizations.

**How to Deal?**
Determine and monitor the third parties you use.
Review the external resources on a regular basis. Removing the items and revoking any access or rights you may have given them is a good idea if you discover products you don’t need.
Use DAST and SAST. While DAST evaluates the operating program without having access to its source code, SAST scans the application code while it is at rest to look for flawed code that poses a security hazard.

This post is originally published at www.nioyatech.com and you can find whole list at https://nioyatech.com/top-11-cloud-security-challenges/