The Most Common Cloud Security Risks - And How to Avoid Them

It's hard to miss the almost weekly security-themed headlines when something has gone drastically wrong. These can lead to company data being compromised, stolen and, in extreme cases, ransomed or resold. The causes behind security breaches are frequently traced back to human error when managing cloud resources - leaving a storage container insecure, careless handling of database credentials or poorly configured access controls. A recent report by IBM estimates the average cost of a data breach for an organization to be in the region of USD 4.45M, with immeasurable damage to an organization's perception. Cloud misconfiguration is ranked as a prominent initial vector for data breaches, closely grouped with stolen or compromised credentials.

Human error resulting in cloud misconfiguration is inherently challenging to guard against, so companies turn to different types of tooling to help identify issues and mitigate cloud security challenges. This is sometimes handled by a centralized function or team who enforces processes and ensures tools and best practices are applied. This may even involve third parties to provide bleeding-edge security know-how. As noted in the IBM report, only 1 in 3 breaches are identified by an organization's internal team or tooling, suggesting that an in-house team is helpful but still insufficient by itself.

It's easy to understand how, even with the best intentions, people can make ultimately fatal mistakes when working with cloud technologies. Each app being managed might have different configurations with different dependencies and underlying requirements. The challenge is further compounded with multiple environments typically in use - development, testing, staging and production environments with other data sets to contend with. Furthermore, different cloud vendors might be used, with different terminology and technologies on offer - public, private and even on-premises cloud infrastructure. Notably, citing the IBM report, the most significant percentage of breaches, 39%, involved data stored across multiple environments, followed by public cloud usage.

Cloud vendors and associated service providers try to mitigate cloud security issues in a number of ways, such as encouraging a “just enough” approach to access and roles, providing sensible, secure defaults for configuration or providing automated scanning and analysis services to identify code and configuration issues early on. While these undoubtedly have prevented data loss, the responsibility lies with development teams and DevOps roles to maintain integrity while avoiding data breaches and human error creeping in. 

A commonly prescribed and best practice approach is to work with the assumption that data will be breached and thus always stored using sufficiently strong encryption. While this is a sensible practice for an organization seeking to reassure users after a breach, it needs more confidence in the organization's infrastructure and development prowess.

The Divio platform is conceived with security by default, meaning taking an opinionated approach to what the platform allows and removing as much of the “attack surface” as possible. Where cloud vendors provide a vast amount of flexibility in what can be configured and depend upon a shared security model, Divio puts cloud infrastructure on the rails. 

Cloud infrastructure security issues can manifest across the cloud, primarily through underlying and interconnected services. With cloud vendors offering hundreds of services, small misconfigurations can easily creep in to break the chain of trust.

Identifying and Addressing Cloud Security Risks with Cloudflare

When using cloud services, it's essential to spot and handle potential security risks. The convenience and flexibility of cloud computing come with their own set of challenges, making it critical to ensure robust security measures are in place. Cloudflare's web application firewall (WAF) protection provides comprehensive measures to safeguard your cloud environment from various threats. This includes advanced detection and mitigation strategies to protect against vulnerabilities and attacks that could compromise your data and operations.

Here are some common risks you should be aware of.

Unmanaged Attack Surface

Unmanaged attack surfaces occur when there are unknown or unsecured entry points within your cloud infrastructure. Attackers can exploit these vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access to your systems. Unmanaged attack surfaces can include unused or forgotten cloud resources, unpatched software, open ports, and weak or default passwords. Attackers can exploit these vulnerabilities to deploy malware, steal data, or disrupt services. The dynamic nature of cloud environments, with resources being frequently added, removed, or modified, makes it challenging to keep track of all potential entry points.

How to Solve: Regularly audit and map your cloud environment to identify all entry points. Use automated discovery tools and security measures to monitor and secure these attack surfaces. Ensure continuous monitoring and implement strong access controls to prevent unauthorized access.

Human Error

Human error is a significant contributor to cloud security challenges. Misconfigurations, weak passwords, and accidental data exposure can lead to severe security breaches. In many cases, these errors are not intentional but result from a lack of awareness or understanding of security best practices. For example, an employee might accidentally configure a storage bucket to be publicly accessible or use a weak password that is easily guessable. Additionally, phishing attacks can trick users into divulging sensitive information or credentials.

How to Solve: Implement tools and solutions that enforce security policies and provide real-time alerts on suspicious activities. Cloudflare's security services can assist in detecting and correcting misconfigurations, enforcing password policies, and monitoring for unusual activity that may indicate a security breach. Conduct regular training sessions for your team to promote best practices in security management and minimize the likelihood of human error. Training should include topics such as recognizing phishing attempts, securely configuring cloud resources, and using strong, unique passwords. Additionally, establish a culture of security awareness within your organization, encouraging employees to stay vigilant and report potential security issues promptly.

Misconfiguration

Misconfiguring cloud resources can lead to substantial security vulnerabilities. Incorrectly set permissions or unpatched software can be exploited by cybercriminals. For instance, if a cloud storage bucket is inadvertently left publicly accessible, it can expose sensitive data. Similarly, unpatched software may have vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit to gain access to your system. The complexity of cloud environments often makes it difficult to ensure that all configurations are secure, especially when multiple teams are involved in managing resources.

How to Solve: Use comprehensive configuration management and automated compliance checks. Regular audits and continuous monitoring are essential to ensure your cloud infrastructure is secure and correctly configured. Establish a routine for updating and patching software to protect against known vulnerabilities. Additionally, implementing role-based access controls can help ensure that only authorized personnel can make configuration changes, reducing the risk of accidental misconfigurations. Cloudflare's solutions can aid in monitoring and managing configurations to maintain a secure cloud environment.

Data Breach

Data breaches are a major concern in cloud security. Unauthorized access to sensitive data can result in financial loss, reputational damage, and legal consequences. Data breaches can occur due to various reasons, including hacking, insider threats, or even physical theft of hardware. The fallout from a data breach can be severe, impacting not only your business's bottom line but also its reputation and customer trust. Legal ramifications can include fines and sanctions, particularly if the breach involves personally identifiable information (PII) and violates data protection regulations such as GDPR or CCPA.

How to Solve: Implement comprehensive security measures to protect against data breaches. This includes encrypting sensitive data both at rest and in transit to ensure that even if data is accessed, it cannot be easily read. Use multi-factor authentication (MFA) to add an extra layer of security for accessing sensitive systems. Regularly conduct security audits and vulnerability assessments to identify and fix potential weaknesses. Employ intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS) to monitor and respond to suspicious activities in real time. Ensure that employees are trained on security best practices and are aware of the latest phishing and social engineering tactics. Establish a robust incident response plan that outlines steps to take in the event of a breach, including notifying affected parties and complying with legal requirements.

DDoS Attacks

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are a significant threat to cloud environments, overwhelming systems with traffic to make them unavailable to users. These attacks can cause downtime, disrupt services, and lead to significant financial and reputational damage.

How to Solve: Implementing robust DDoS protection measures is crucial. Cloudflare offers advanced DDoS protection services that can detect and mitigate such attacks in real-time. By leveraging Cloudflare’s network, you can absorb large-scale attacks and maintain the availability and performance of your services. Regularly test your DDoS protection measures and have a response plan in place to handle potential attacks.

Understanding Common Cloud Security Challenges

As organizations increasingly migrate their applications and data to the cloud, they encounter a unique set of security challenges. Understanding these common cloud security challenges is essential for protecting sensitive information and maintaining the integrity of cloud-based systems. By identifying potential vulnerabilities and implementing robust security measures, businesses can confidently leverage the cloud's benefits while minimizing risks.

1. Cloud storage that is inadvertently exposed

A far too common security blunder is misconfigured data buckets used by an application, or even users, to store and share data. Most applications require some form of permanent storage for meta and application data. For example, storing files that a user might upload through an application. Granting sufficient access that allows the application access but prevents the data from being made accessible to the public is ripe for human error to creep in.

Diagnosing an insecure data bucket is often unclear - the application works and behaves as intended, but the consequences are silent and severe. Implementing sufficient logging and log management to examine who has access needs to be coupled with regular auditing is an obvious mitigation step. Still, as an organization's structure changes, it can be easily neglected and fall by the wayside. This is why robust cloud security measures are crucial to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of stored data.

Divio addresses cloud storage by mandating best practices - providing a decentralized storage network environment variable that apps must use. This allows the underlying cloud vendor infrastructure to be abstracted away and gives the app developer confidence they can depend on the variable they are automatically provisioned. Users of the Divio platform cannot accidentally misconfigure cloud storage, and the secure-by-default model cannot be broken.

Strengthening Security with Cloudflare WAF

To address this, we've added Cloudflare's Web Application Firewall (WAF) to Divio. This helps protect our databases and applications from common security threats. With Cloudflare WAF, your data stays safe, and you can continue developing and troubleshooting smoothly without worrying about security.

2. Misunderstanding or neglecting the Shared Responsibility Model

The Shared Responsibility Model is a widely used concept amongst cloud vendors that defines who is responsible for keeping data and infrastructure safe and secure. It is intended to make it clear to customers where responsibilities start and stop.

While the model differs slightly between vendors, a common misconception is to overly assume that a cloud vendor is responsible entirely for ensuring security practices are applied and maintained. This can create a dangerous sense of overconfidence, assuming the cloud vendor is taking care of all security topics, and is especially difficult to assert across an organization that might be in a constant state of change. 

The Divio approach is defined more clearly by abstracting away the configuration of the cloud vendor infrastructure. Developers have responsibility over the behavior of an application deployed on the Divio platform - ensuring it behaves as it should and uses the resources that the Divio platform provides, while Divio manages and provides secure infrastructure - regardless of the cloud vendor being orchestrated underneath.

3. Inadequate access management control

Databases form the backbone of most apps, potentially storing sensitive information and representing the most appealing target for data breaches through access and management oversights. 

Keeping databases and the data they hold secure is typically more nuanced than federating who can access the data and touches upon broader concerns - the backups of the data and how they are stored and accessed, how data is moved between replicated databases or insufficient offline encryption.

Best-made intentions for access controls are often tempting to compromise upon, especially during development, to gain quick insight into unexpected app behavior. Access can be easily granted and forgotten, and legacy settings can be carried across from development or test environments into a production database configuration.

The Divio platform, along with Cloudflare application security core, implements a firm stance on database access and configuration.

A database is automatically provisioned for your app through the Divio Control Panel, and following best practices, access is granted to an app through an environment variable. Divio federates access to the database and the application, preventing direct access in all cases.

Divio offers an alternative approach that allows a database to be easily copied between cloud and local environments through the included developer tools. Alternatively, a remote connection can be made to a limited cloned cloud environment that facilitates fault finding and troubleshooting. 

The opinionated approach to access management aims to achieve a nuanced balance: - databases are never exposed whilst fault finding and development are not impeded.

4. Shadow IT 

Shadow IT, or simply unauthorized services, is a problem that cloud infrastructure is particularly susceptible to. It refers to technical users creating and running unfettered services, which can lead to sprawling cloud infrastructure, security blind spots and large uncontrollable bills. This is a complicated problem to retrospectively address when services might already be in production and used in various apps.

Organizations typically try to find a balance between providing flexible working arrangements and governing access to services through implementing roles and access rights with a dedicated DevOps function.

Determining user roles and suitable access rights usually represents an ongoing, time-consuming process, adjusting according to needs, new projects and new requirements. Most notably, this area is ripe for human error, granting a user or process too many capabilities making it possible to expose data or break best practices accidentally.

Not having infrastructure on demand for development teams introduces bottlenecks and frustration, slowing development and release velocity.

The Divio approach is dramatically different to what the underlying cloud vendors offer and takes a simplified and opinionated approach. Instead of providing users with granular access controls, the Divio platform works in the other direction by giving the app permissions depending on the pre-configured resources it depends upon. Granular controls are abstracted into simple and easy-to-understand roles.

Three user types are available:

• Regular user: is given access per project.

• Admin: has access to all apps within an organization.

• Owner: governs an organization, adding admins or regular users accordingly.

This makes it very easy for an organization or the owner of the organization to get an overview of what projects are being run and where they originate from. Developers can work on apps, deploying new versions on-demand without compromising on the web application's security through misconfiguration of the cloud infrastructure.

5. Data Sovereignty

Data sovereignty is becoming increasingly important as businesses operate in a global environment where data regulations vary by region. At Divio, we understand the necessity of maintaining control over where data is stored and processed, and our partnership with Cloudflare plays a pivotal role in achieving this.

Cloudflare's application security capabilities allow us to offer unparalleled data sovereignty solutions. With a vast global network, Cloudflare ensures that data is stored and processed in compliance with local regulations, giving businesses peace of mind that their data remains within specified geographical boundaries. This is particularly crucial for organizations dealing with sensitive information that must adhere to strict regional data protection laws.

By leveraging Cloudflare's advanced security features, Divio provides a secure, compliant, and sovereign cloud environment, empowering businesses to meet their data residency requirements while benefiting from the agility and scalability of cloud services.

Integrating Cloudflare's application security into Divio's offerings ensures that we deliver not only secure but also regionally compliant cloud solutions, tailored to meet the diverse needs of our global clientele.

6. Ensuring Cloud Compliance

Regulatory and industry data management requirements, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), were established to safeguard sensitive information. Despite the shift towards cloud computing, these compliance requirements remain stringent.

At Divio, we understand the importance of staying compliant with these standards. Our collaboration with Cloudflare ensures that our cloud services meet and exceed regulatory data security requirements. Cloudflare's robust application security features, including web application firewalls (WAF) and DDoS protection, enable us to protect data against modern threats while maintaining compliance.

Organizations under strict compliance regulations must ensure their technology providers, including cloud services, adhere to the same security standards. By integrating Cloudflare's advanced security measures, Divio provides a secure and compliant environment, ensuring that our clients can confidently meet their regulatory obligations while leveraging the benefits of cloud computing.This proactive approach helps address potential cloud computing security issues, safeguarding sensitive information and maintaining regulatory compliance. 

Avoid Cloud Security Challenges by Delegating Security to a Platform

Cloudflare application security and Divio provide a comprehensive solution for managing cloud environments, ensuring that security is maintained across all aspects of cloud infrastructure. By combining the robust security features of Cloudflare with the orchestration capabilities of Divio, organisations can achieve a secure and efficient cloud environment. This integrated approach helps to mitigate common security blunders and provides a reliable foundation for managing cloud resources effectively.

By offering an opinionated approach to building and safely deploying apps, a best-practices approach to security and being rigorously verified against ISO 27001, the Divio platform can address common pitfalls in cloud security.

On top of ISO 27001 certification, Divio provides award-winning support that puts engineers and hands-on developers on the front line, directly connecting users to cloud competence. Eliminating the more usual stepped escalation-based support structure means response times are dramatically reduced and a more personal approach to solving issues together.

If you want to learn more about the shared security model of your current infrastructure or are simply looking for a way to work worry-free, get in touch with us.

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