Cloud Computing Security Threats In The Year 2018

Today, cloud computing is growing even more popular than it was in the past. However, along with this growth in popularity comes a growing number of security risks. As these grow more common, it's important that you know what to watch for so you can protect your business.

Why Security Threats are a Major Issue Today

According to Sky High Networks, while the cloud computing network was only worth $91 billion in 2015, it will be worth $191 billion in 2020. This is because there are so many great advantages of cloud computing, including:

• Lower cost
• Faster time to market
• Increased employee productivity
• Helps employees do their work more efficiently
• Higher flexibility
• Automatic software updates
• Increased collaboration
• The freedom to work from anywhere

Unfortunately, along with these advantages is a key concern about security. This is somewhat holding the growth of “bring your own cloud” (BYOC) back today. Since the cloud stores, all of the security of your passwords can't be taken lightly. All a cybercriminal needs are these passwords to critically attach a company's infrastructure. When this happens, people start referring to BYOC as “shadow IT.” This is because of all the risks involved with BYOC – many of which employees are unaware. These risks can turn into a huge, pervasive problem, especially when companies are unaware of what apps their employees are using.

12 General Security Threats

Incapsula says that more than 70% of today's businesses do at least some of their work in the cloud. Of these businesses, about 90% are at least moderately concerned about security. The 12 biggest security threats companies worry about today include:

• Data breaches occur when private information is released to the public. Although this isn't a risk that's unique to cloud computing, it's still a top concern for cloud users.
• Insufficient identity, credentials, and access management often allow bad actors to masquerade as real users so they can access and manipulate your data.
• Insecure interfaces and application programming interfaces (APIs)
• System vulnerabilities occur within the software user interfaces (Uis) or APIs that customers use when providing, managing, and monitoring their data in the cloud. It's important that these are designed to protect against accidental and malicious attempts to get around policies.
• Account hijacking occurs when attackers infiltrate your system through its vulnerabilities and disrupt your business' operations. This places your information at risk, especially when the cloud has various organizations' working in close proximity to one another. Now it's not only your safety you must watch, but you must also be concerned about those around you.
• Malicious insiders can access sensitive information, which is why you don't want to rely solely on cloud service providers for your business' safety.
• Advanced persistent threats (APTs) are parasitic in that they infiltrate your system, create a foothold in the IT infrastructure, then steal data.
• Data loss aren't always malicious according to CSO Online. Accidents and physical catastrophes also happen, making data backup essential.
• Insufficient due diligence in the creation of business strategies happens when consideration isn't given to service providers.
• Abuse and nefarious use of cloud services including poor security, using free trials, and people trying to fraudulently sign up for accounts open you up to malicious attacks.
• Denial of service (DoS) attacks prevent users from accessing their data by forcing the cloud to consume a lot of its finite resources. When this happens the system shuts down and legitimate users can't access it.
• Shared technology vulnerabilities occur when you share infrastructure, platforms, and applications with other businesses in the cloud.

Security Threat Regarding Video Conferencing

Many firms such as UberConference use video conferencing as a part of their normal, daily business routine. This is because the software lets people from around the world and in different time zones communicate with one another, in real-time. While this saves a lot of time and money, it also poses some inherent business risks that companies must address.

The security risks of video conferencing come from the program interacting with your network's other systems. Encryption through SSL security helps reduce these risks. Compare Business Products says there are a few other things you can do as well, including:

• Password protection so that only those invited to the video conference can enter is vital. While this takes time to create a list of the meeting's participants by making sure that only they can enter or record a meeting you can rest assured you don't have any cyber hackers in attendance.
• Make sure you have a “session border controller” in place instead of a firewall. This is specially designed for filtering and managing media flow between your business and the outside world.

 These are some of the best ways to protect your video conferences from the various types of threats it may experience. Typically, these threats and what you can do about them include:

• Threats against end-points and servers require the use of a PKI (public key infrastructure)
• Threats against the control channel require the use of SIP/TLS encryption of signaling
• Threats against spying require the use of SRTP media encryption
• Threats involving SIP trunking require all devices mutually authenticate themselves in the SIP trunk, which should end in a SIP proxy (e.g. sub-band coding)

There are a lot of great tools that will help your business grow and collaborate in the cloud today. These will save you a lot of time and money, but only if you know what types of threats to watch for and how to prevent them from ever affecting your business in the first place. As technology continues to grow, so will these security risks. While you do need to err on the side of caution, you shouldn't become so cautious you're afraid to use the cloud for your business today. This fear will only hold you back and stop your company from growing and competing – two things you definitely can't afford.