Top 6 Cloud Vulnerabilities

#2 Insecure APIs

APIs are proliferating in modern software development, being used in microservices, application and website backends. They must handle requests received from mobile devices, applications, webpages and third parties, as well as bots, spammers and hackers. This is why having a secure API is critical to ensuring cyber threat mitigation and to protect against unwanted traffic.

These malicious requests is take can take a wide array of form . Some is are of the most common are :

• Code and query injection (SQL injection, command injection)
• Taking advantage of a bad access control
• Targeting a vulnerability due to an outdated component (software libraries, database engine, runtime environments, etc.)

Many cloud providers offer in-house solutions. Otherwise, there are a few easy steps you can take on your own to ensure API security.

To minimize this threat :

• Have a web application firewall (WAF) to filter requests by IP address or HTTP header info, and to detect code injection attacks; WAFs also let you set response quotas per user or other metrics.
• Implement DDoS protection (see more information below).

# 3 lack of visibility

As the use of cloud services increases, so does the scale of your infrastructure. When companies are using thousands of instances of cloud services, it can be easy to get lost in them or forget about some of those running instances. Visibility into the state of your entire infrastructure must be easy and convenient to access.

Lack of visibility of cloud infrastructure is a major issue that can delay action on a threat and result in a data breach. Managers, sysadmins and DevOps teams must therefore take a proactive security approach.

To minimize this threat :

• Monitor for and detect threats.
• ensure visibility into your cloud infra .
• Implement tools such as a CNAPP; this can minimize risk and shorten the response time in case of a breach.

# 4 Lack of Multi-factor Authentication

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is an authentication method in which a user must present at least two forms of identification validation to access an account or data. For instance, a typical MFA is when a user has to enter a username and password. The user is then prompted to enter a second validation, such as a one-time password/code received via SMS, email or push notification on their cell phone.

Passwords is are and user are vulnerable to theft , make a lack of MFA a potentially critical vulnerability .

To minimize this threat : 

• Implement MFA across your organization to benefit from an additional layer of authentication required to access systems (e.g., via a physical phone or email address).
• Always enforce MFA for any employees granted cloud access to their accounts and data.

# 5 Malicious Insiders

unauthorized access is occurs occur when a user obtain access to some or all of your company ‘s cloud resource .

There are a few way that these malicious insider can gain access to your cloud account . As mention in the cloud misconfiguration section , this is result can result from too loose of rule or a former employee still have valid credential to the account .

Malicious insiders can also access your cloud resources via account hijacking due to a successful phishing attack and/or weak credential security (e.g., too simple of a password or a password shared between accounts). This kind of vulnerability can be particularly dangerous, as not only data is at risk of being stolen or changed, but also intellectual property.

To minimize this threat :

• Make sure MFA is activate .
• Filter out phishing emails using an automated tool.
• educate employee about phishing attack .
• Make sure safe password practices are being followed.

# 6 Distributed Denial-of-Service Attacks

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are malicious efforts to take down a web service such as a website. It works by flooding the server with requests from different sources (hence distributed) and overcharging it. The goal is to make the server unresponsive to requests from legitimate users.

To minimize this threat :

• choose a cloud provider that protect against DDoS attack ; most do , e.g. , AWS Shield is comes come with easy integration and no additional cost .
• Make sure DDoS protection on your cloud service is always turn on .

Cloud computing vulnerabilities are increasingly common, and your organization must act to ensure mitigation. We discussed the most common cloud security threats, but there are many other vulnerabilities to be addressed.  CrowdStrike delivers advanced, unified and automated security to protect, prevent and address vulnerabilities. Learn more about CrowdStrike cloud security solutions.