
COMMON THREATS TO CLOUD SECURITY
Cloud computing, is a modern concept that is significant to various organizations. It is a vital amenity that facilitates the day-to-day running of such organizations. Like all important amenities, it faces several challenges in that, it is exposed to various threats and attacks. Threats such as denial of service and shared technology vulnerabilities have been known to be major threats in the past but come recent events, their level of risk has greatly reduced giving light to new threats.
These threats may be classified as either intentional or unintentional. Unintentional attacks occur as a result of human error or weaknesses in the cloud system whereas intentional threats are direct or targeted approaches that involve compromising data integrity, confidentiality and security.
The following are some of the top threats facing cloud security.
Data Breach

This is one of the major threats facing cloud security which involves the leakage, usage or manipulation of confidential data by unauthorized users. It can be classified as intentional or unintentional depending on the nature of its occurrence. One major reason for its occurrence includes insufficient authentication and authorization controls, which leave data vulnerable to unauthorized access.
An occurrence of a data breach results in negative impacts such as:
- Legal and contractual liabilities
- Reduction in trust of customers or partners
- Financial expenses incurred in recovering from the losses made
- Decrease in market value
Among other causes of data breaches, the use of back doors is a common cause that involves secretly bypassing normal authentication and authorization of a cloud systems. Weak and/or reused credentials among others can also result in a breach. Some cases of data breaches are hardly detected taking months for them to be discovered e.g. IP theft. Therefore, a data breach is a serious threat that requires multiple countermeasures and strict guidelines to be implemented since an instance of this activity is fatal to the organization affected.
All in all, strategies and well-formulated response plans abiding by Cloud Service Providers and data privacy requirements can help victims of a data breach reduce the likelihood and/or impact.
Insider Threat
When a user who has current or previous access to confidential data uses it for malicious intentions, it is regarded as an insider threat. Cloud security reports that 58% of organizations are victims of insider threats. They are hardly expected for they happen within an organization’s trust circle, in that the basis of data protection is placed on the confidentiality of an employee.
Some common causes of this attack include:
- Disgruntled employees
- Employees falling for phishing emails
- Storage of confidential data on personal secondary storage devices
- Employee negligence
- Missconfigured cloud servers
Insider threats compromise data integrity as well as the lower trust of consumers in an organization’s data protection policies.
Insecure interfaces and APIs
Application Programming Interface is a software interface designed to facilitate interaction between the user and a cloud system. They are usually the most exposed part of a system since they have a public Ip address outside the trusted organizational boundary.
Insecure APIs are vulnerable to the hijacking of sensitive and private data. Threats to API interface include SQL injection, whereby bits of code are altered to serve unintended purposes such as display of confidential data.
Therefore, APIs require proper shielding, testing and management to mitigate their vulnerabilities for security and access to cloud services is reliant on the security of these APIs.
Malicious Cracking

In this form of attack, a malicious party gains control of the victim’s account by capturing his or her credentials. It involves security hacks of cloud-stored data for the wrong reasons such as selling it to the highest bidder or learning an organization’s secret. Malicious files may be downloaded unintentionally by a user or it may be a direct attack by a malicious party.
These files may act as back doors which provide access to cloud-stored data. A malicious attack targets the virtualization layers, therefore, obstructing other virtualized machines. This obscures data encryption leaving data accessible to unauthorized parties.
Weak Control Pane controls

A weak control pane is when a system facilitator or DevOps engineer is not in full control of the data infrastructure’s logic, security and verification. This leads to vulnerabilities such as data corruption, breaches and unauthorized access. One huge impact of a weak control pane is data loss which could in turn deter the confidence users have in the services provided.
In order to avoid future setbacks, consumers should vet cloud control panes thoroughly to ensure their convenience and reliability for a weak control pane may prove fatal in the future.
Abuse of Cloud Services

A cloud system may be victim to mishandling and mismanagement when it is not used for its intended purposes or when it is manipulated to conduct activities such as unauthorized access, malicious software and other nefarious functions that don’t serve the system’s intended purpose. Abuse may not necessarily be initiated by a malicious party but also by legitimate users.
Some examples of misuse of cloud systems include execution of DDoS attacks, hosting pirated content, brute force attacks of stolen credential databases and large scale click fraud.
SUMMARY
Adversaries have become irrefutable in expounding on errors of a cloud system as well as its weaknesses to serve their reprehensible agendas. Therefore, it can be concluded that cloud security is subject to multiple threats, some new, others old but both of them have the same objective, which is compromising data security. These threats exist because an organization’s data is extremely valuable to competitors or other parties interested in uncovering an organization’s informational assets. Though as serious as these threats may be, various countermeasures can prevent these threats from causing harm to cloud systems.