Top 6 risks in public cloud services

Data storage in the cloud is now required for every enterprise that wishes to stay current with technological improvements. More and more businesses and larger corporations are utilizing hybrid and public cloud architectures. According to a Eurostat survey from 2021, 72% of large organizations and 53% of medium-sized ones employ a cloud solution for their data storage needs.

Public clouds boost the flexibility of virtual machine deployment while being cost-effective, especially for smaller organizations, which frequently makes them a very appealing alternative for startups. They are not, however, risk-free. Additionally, the dangers of moving to the public cloud can differ greatly from those of using private cloud solutions for your business.

IT professionals should use effective monitoring tools to prevent public cloud threats and assure consistent, high-quality performance. Here are six public cloud concerns to think about before using it:

Availability

An important concern with public cloud access is uptime. In addition to connection errors and downtime, there is also a danger of losing access to services when the cloud provider goes down. In the past two years, many cloud providers have been the target of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, and the number of these attacks has progressively climbed.

Your IT team can no longer control redundancy and fault tolerance in the public cloud; therefore, you must rely on the vendor's pledge to regularly back up its data to prevent losses. These backup plans, however, could be clearer and need to state who is responsible in the event of harm or interruptions.

An organization must know the provider's disaster recovery plans, disaster recovery, and failover commitments before moving its data to a public or hybrid cloud solution. It's crucial to exercise caution when dealing with smaller cloud vendors who lack sufficient data centers since they might turn to independent contractors. The agreement must also clearly define who can be held accountable if a service outage happens.

Shared access

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) solutions enable data to be stored on the same hardware. In contrast, software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions compel users to share the same application, resulting in joint data storage in shared databases.

Today, the possibility of another customer using the same tables to access your data is practically nonexistent—at least when using big cloud providers. Multitenancy issues might become problematic with smaller cloud providers, so exposure needs to be properly considered.

It is imperative to properly divide each customer's virtual machines to eliminate the possibility of a renter unintentionally viewing another customer's data. Establishing a healthy workflow is also important because one tenant's excessive traffic may hurt other users' performance. Most of these possible issues can be safely avoided by taking the proper safeguards at a hypervisor level during configuration.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

One of the most appealing characteristics of cloud services is "bring your device" (BYOD) mobile strategies, which have enabled businesses to boost employee productivity and happiness by using the most straightforward trick: By allowing employees to utilize their own mobile devices, such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

With BYOD methods, up to 70% of businesses have guaranteed that staff members are happier, more pleased, and free to work anywhere, whether at home or on the go. This decreases downtime and inefficiencies. For obvious reasons, BYODs became an even more valuable tool for many workers who were compelled to work remotely as smart working became the norm during the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more about smart data management in a post-pandemic world here.

Even while BYODs might have better specifications than those provided by the company, employee-owned devices might not have proper security. Furthermore, since external devices cannot be traced or monitored without specific tools, a data breach on an employee's device may be impossible to contain. Additionally, even if the employee's device is safe, it might still get stolen or fall into the wrong hands, allowing anyone outside the office to access the company's network with clear repercussions. Consider setting a Mobile Device Management (MDM) policy for corporate and BYOD devices.

Control over data

Larger cloud services are not risk-free, and they may expose businesses to a different form of threat.

The main privacy concerns with public cloud solutions are related to the possibility of sensitive data falling into the hands of unauthorized people because data is stored outside the company's IT infrastructure. Because of this, more recent cloud services typically advise users to back up their data. However, when third-party file-sharing services are involved, privacy may be at risk since stronger security settings, often used to protect the most sensitive data, are no longer under the enterprise's control.

However, some actions can be taken. Data transfer outside of the company can be stopped by data loss prevention (DLP). Security regulations may forbid employees from using file-sharing websites like Dropbox. Users can be prevented from using unauthorized SaaS services by deploying Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB).

Encrypting your files between 128- and 256 bits during storage and transit is the most effective strategy to lower this risk. In this manner, all data transferred by unidentified individuals outside the company is unintelligible. Verify that the storage offered by the Cloud Service Provider (CSP) uses military-grade encryption such as AES-256 and FIPS 140-2 for data at rest and that these resources are protected by encryption mechanisms such as SSL/TLS certificates while the data is in transit.

Data ownership

Since the vendor owns the data, many public cloud providers have clauses in their contracts that expressly declare that a customer is not the only data owner.

For legal reasons, providers frequently retain the right to "monitor the use" of shared and transmitted data and content. For instance, a cloud provider may report a user who utilizes its services for questionable activities and inform the relevant authorities.

Data is frequently a resource that can be mined and investigated to give cloud vendors greater chances for income generation. You may gain some understanding of how your data will be treated and whether you are the owner when it is sent and stored by reading the terms of service.

Exploits

The virtual nature of the cloud brings some virtual exploits to life. Most users are unaware of these vulnerabilities, and thanks to public clouds, they have even less security control.

Malicious cyber attackers can easily prey on less experienced remote workers. According to recent findings from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the most vulnerable remote work-related vulnerabilities are found in cloud-based systems. According to the research, "preferred new targets are weaknesses related to remote work, VPN (Virtual Private Network), and cloud-based technology introduced after 2019." Even with encrypted files, snooping may still occur if data is caught in transit to the target node.

For instance, when cryptographic keys are exposed, co-hosted virtual machines can spy on one another to a certain extent, creating serious security threats to the business. It is crucial to use secure connections that can stop outsiders from accessing even the metadata stored in the cloud and continuously update the security measures to meet any new virtual exploits.

Public cloud storage services benefit businesses and typically secure data more effectively than an individual business can with its own devices. However, one should be aware of the potential risks associated with this solution and the additional steps to reduce them. Adopting new technologies has always been accompanied by concerns about security. With the rise of cloud computing, enterprises must now adopt additional security measures to safeguard sensitive data kept online.