Before we understand the vulnerabilities of the cloud, let’s understand the terms ‘Cloud Computing’ and ‘Vulnerability’. Cloud computing is nothing but on-demand service where resources are provided to the users on the Internet for application, data servers, and management service. Vulnerability is a weakness that is targeted by the exploiters to harm the data and gain unauthorized access to someone else’s specifics.
Cloud computing is progressing widely and with the use of cloud services for user’s demands, one should also keep a record of the vulnerabilities approaching the cloud services.
Thievery of organization property and Data loss
Cloud computing allows storing the data online. The stored data can be attacked or exploited by the attacker to gain unwanted access which will be a huge loss to the organization. With the gain of the organization data, the malicious person can perform various operations like data alteration, data deletion and encrypt the data with strong encryption for their unfair means. Apart from thievery, the data loss can also take place due to the occurrence of any natural calamity.
Data Breaches
Data breaches are often seen in cloud computing. This occurs when someone within or from outside the organization releases the data knowingly or unknowingly. The information is copied, transmitted, and stolen for personal means by many black hat hackers or the attackers trying to blackmail which leads to data loss of the organisation, national and political conflicts. Data breaches can be quite expensive due to compromised data, reputation damage and investigation.
Access restrictions
Any enterprise requires complete authorized access to achieve security. Insufficient restrictions and unauthorized access can lead to attackers gaining access to private data. It is essential to double-check the security and provide access to the associated person only to prevent data loss. The use of security tools can be done to achieve more security, The security tools help in achieving the security configurations and brief us about threats.
Stolen Credentials
The credentials play a very vital role in accessing the data. If by any means the attacker or malicious person gains the cloud credentials, the hacker can also gain the access to the content service provider along with additional resources provided by the cloud. Improper access management and loss of credentials are of great risk to cloud computing. Also lack of due diligence in the latest securities and upgrading the security measures causes great havoc in cloud services.
Frequent vulnerabilities in cloud computing
There are many vulnerabilities, one of the most common is SQL injection. SQL injection mainly focuses on destroying the database which may lead to data loss completely. This is done via web page input which will unknowingly execute the malicious code inserted in it.
Another type of cloud injection is cross-site scripting in which the malicious scripts are inserted. The users are unaware of any of the scripts and execute which leads to gain access to the cookies, and the credentials, and the session tokens as well.
Supply chain Vulnerabilities
SVC is a weakness or vulnerability in the supply network which is commonly seen in cloud computing. Every employee associated with the supply chain is at risk of weakness and threats. In order to protect this type of vulnerability, the CSP is partially responsible for maintaining and detecting the flaws in the supply chain networks against the cloud platforms.
Organizations must have strong security policies. Different strategies can be considered to avoid vulnerabilities and protect the data from higher risks. Approximately 80 percent of the IT companies operate on cloud services and not maintaining proper security can cause huge losses. Most companies also use web application firewalls to protect from vulnerabilities like SQL injection, DDoS attacks.
