Cloud computing can be referred to as a technology that implements the internet for keeping the storage and management of data over the remote servers and thus, offer access to it via an internet connection.
It has helped to bring a revolution to the use of the IT sector by small and medium businesses over the world. It is allowing different businesses to use high-end technology and available information economically and conveniently. Cloud computing is what makes the concept of virtual offices possible in today’s time when it is almost impossible to work through brick-and-mortar business setups. Cloud computing works for businesses that have remote work set up and engage with clients over computers, mobiles, or laptops. Lack of efficiency in recognizing the susceptibilities of cloud computing can lead to the downfall of your organization when you are trying to consider such dynamic tools and techniques.
Still being so beneficial, it can’t be the right choice for everyone. The reason for this can be the risks cloud computing bring with it. Let us learn what are the risks making it complex for some businesses to use it.
Risks involved with Cloud Computing
Malware
When you transfer heaps of sensitive data to internet-linking cloud settings, organizations are opening themselves to extraneous cyber coercion. Malware attacks are threats to cloud security and studies show that most organizations probably experience data breaches when cloud usage rises. Cybercriminals are becoming gradually savvy and organizations should be conscious of the evolving threats.
Lack of customer trust
Data breaches ultimately will lead to a decline in trust by customers. The breach can take your customers away and business loss for the company, which impacts your company’s revenue.
Data Loss
This is what almost every business is scared to lose while using cloud computing or any technology. It can bring issues of deletion of all the data, data corruption, data unreadable by the software, app, or any user. Data loss can occur when your business-related sensitive data is in the hands of someone else, which means a lack of data security.
Data Breach
Data Breach is defined as a process when confidential data of any business or individual is seen, retrieved, or stolen by someone with unauthorized access, which means the organization’s data is hacked by some heinous individual or organization.
Compliance
There are high risks involved like non-compliance to the existing privacy regulation policies and contracts in regards to data handling such as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and Europe’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). Cloud computing allows users access on large scale and if you haven’t implemented proper security measures monitoring over the network might seem quite complex.
Confidentiality
Confidentiality is a major concern for all businesses when they think about investing in new technology. It is also a factor behind why businesses don’t consider using cloud computing. If the business operations of a company need data handling, the protection of sensitive data is a concern of major priority. No business feels comfortable while sharing their data with other third parties since the responsibility of data leakage can seem hard to handle when data is dealt with between two different parties.
Denial of Service Attacks
DoS attacks can happen when your business receives too much traffic. The attackers often aim at big organizations’ web servers and to recover the data that is lost, it will need a lot of time and money.
Inadequate Control on Performance
The risk about the system quality may be exiguous and the cloud computing service provider might not offer quality services every time. This can lead to a lack of control over your business performance making you face severe losses in your ROI.
How to strengthen security in cloud computing services?
- It is important to execute risk analysis to analyze the cyber security of your business organization and the efficiency of control over the security you have installed. You must identify the potential vulnerabilities with the risk assessment so that you can make information-driven decisions for establishing security.
- You must ensure consistent monitoring of your cyber security risk management. Regular monitoring will become more important while ensuring you attain proper cyber hygiene consistently.
- You can employ Multi-Factor Authentication to protect the credentials of your company’s user accounts from hackers, which can allow ways to hackers to get unauthorized access to your company’s operations. It is one of the most cost-efficient ways to keep hackers from accessing.
- You don’t need to assign access controls to all of your company’s users. You can set up suitable authorization with which each employee can only view or access data as required by them to finish their job. This will ensure your staff doesn’t make any changes in your database accidentally or deliberately along with protection from the hackers having credentials from your employees.
- Make sure you comprehensively analyze the cloud service agreement and discuss data security policies from your cloud computing partner. This will surely affect the security as well as ownership liability for your cloud service provider and company. You and your team must know all the users, their dedicated roles, and permission for access. It will allow you to identify and temper security susceptibilities so that cloud data breaches don’t happen.
The cloud computing infrastructure can be complicated which can be a threat to security. Companies can enjoy advantages from the cyber security solutions transformed into the cloud. Businesses that invest in cloud computing are taking a big risk if they are not analyzing the threats it brings with itself. Businesses and big enterprises must address all the upcoming security risks and challenges before you adapt your business to security tools to help your business operations work seamlessly and with utmost efficiency. With the right technology in place, cloud computing experts and companies can enjoy a range of cloud computing benefits.