What are common cloud security risks and how to mitigate them?
By Pooja | 26th June 2025
Common Cloud Security Threats and Mitigation Tactics
With an increasing number of organizations shifting their operations to the cloud, cloud security threats have become a key concern. Cloud computing presents a variety of advantages, such as scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency, but it also creates new security threats. In this article, we cover common cloud security threats and mitigation tactics.
Cloud Security Threats
- Data Breaches: Unauthorized access to sensitive information that is stored in the cloud, usually as a result of misconfiguration, weak passwords, or poor encryption. Data breaches can lead to financial loss on a large scale, reputational harm, and legal consequences.
- Misconfiguration: Inappropriate settings or permissions that allow cloud resources to be accessed by unauthorized users or compromised with data breaches. Misconfiguration is a leading reason for cloud security violations, and it could either be caused by human oversight or the absence of specialized expertise.
- Insecure APIs: Flaws in application programming interfaces (APIs) that make cloud services or data available for unauthorized access. APIs are a favourite target of attackers, as insecure APIs can result in data breaches and other security issues.
- Insider Threats: Employees or contractors that have access to cloud assets that act intentionally or unintentionally to cause security breaches. Insider threats may be hard to identify and prevent, and they can lead to substantial loss of reputation and funds for an organization.
- Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks: Burrowing cloud services with traffic to render them inaccessible to legitimate users. DoS attacks can cause substantial downtime and monetary losses, and they may be hard to counter.
- Data Loss: Unintentional deletion, hardware crashes, or malicious attacks that lead to permanent data loss. Data loss can be disastrous for organizations, and it can lead to severe monetary losses and reputation damage.
- Violation of Compliance: Noncompliance with regulatory requirements for data protection and privacy that can lead to fines and damage to reputation. Noncompliance can cause substantial financial losses and damage to reputation and may be hard to rectify.
- Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs): Sophisticated, prolonged cyber-attacks that breach cloud environments and go unnoticed for a lengthy amount of time. APTs have the potential to cause severe reputational and financial damage to an organization, and they are sometimes hard to detect and counteract.
Mitigation Strategies
- Leverage Strong Access Controls: Employ multi-factor authentication, role-based access controls, and the principle of least privilege to restrict access to cloud resources. Strong access controls can ensure that cloud resources are not accessed by unauthorized users and decrease the threat of data breaches.
- Encrypt Data: Employ encryption protocols such as TLS and AES to secure data in transit as well as at rest. Encryption can assist in securing data against unauthorized access and lowering the threat of data breaches.
- Regularly Update and Patch: Update cloud services and applications with current security patches. Updates and patches can assist in preventing security vulnerabilities and lowering the threat of data breaches.
- Monitor and Audit: Regularly monitor cloud infrastructures for security threats and audit configurations to avoid misconfiguration. Monitoring and auditing can identify security threats and avoid data breaches.
- Use Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) Tools: Leverage CSPM tools to detect and remediate security risks in cloud infrastructures. CSPM tools can detect security risks and offer remediation suggestions.
- Train Employees: Educate employees on cloud security best practices and the significance of security awareness. Training of employees can prevent security incidents and minimize the likelihood of data breaches.
- Implement Incident Response Plan: Create a plan to respond quickly and effectively to security incidents. An incident response plan can minimize the effect of security incidents and minimize downtime.
Best Practices
- Perform Regular Security Audits: Perform regular security audits to detect security threats and vulnerabilities in cloud environments.
- Leverage Cloud-Native Security Solutions: Leverage cloud-native security solutions to monitor and safeguard cloud environments.
- Enable Cloud Security Governance: Enable cloud security governance to ensure that cloud security policies and procedures are established and enforced.
- Utilize Encryption: Utilize encryption to secure data in transit and at rest.
- Train Employees: Educate employees on cloud security best practices and the importance of security awareness.
- Implement Network Segmentation: Implement network segmentation to isolate sensitive data and applications.
- Use Identity and Access Management (IAM): Use IAM to manage access to cloud resources and ensure that only authorized users have access.
Cloud Security Frameworks
- NIST Cybersecurity Framework: A widely adopted framework that provides guidelines for managing and reducing cybersecurity risk.
- Cloud Security Alliance (CSA): A non-profit organization that offers cloud security best practices and guidance.
- ISO 27001: An international information security management system standard.
Conclusion
Cloud security threats are of a serious concern for organizations implementing cloud computing. Some of the most common cloud security threats are data breaches, misconfiguration, insecure APIs, insider threats, DoS attacks, data loss, compliance breaches, and APT.