Understanding Cloud Exploitation and Its Impact
Understanding Cloud Exploitation
Organizations use the cloud to store all kinds of sensitive corporate data, including customer records, employment contracts and receipts. This makes it a cybercriminal goldmine, and it’s why cloud exploitation is so common. Cybercriminals can steal this data and sell it on the Dark Web or blackmail the company with a ransom. It’s also possible for attackers to take a company’s entire infrastructure offline by flooding it with traffic. This is called a denial of service attack (DoS).
Attackers can gain access to a cloud system in many ways, including malware infections and unauthorized use of cloud services. Unauthorized cloud services are particularly dangerous because they allow attackers to exploit vulnerabilities that are outside the security perimeter of the organization’s network, and attackers can use social engineering techniques, account takeover and lateral movement tactics to maintain their presence on the victim’s system.
In addition, a business’s use of a cloud service could expose it to threats that are not detected by its traditional security tools because these tools are designed for on-premises environments and don’t address issues in a cloud environment. A vulnerability in a cloud service, such as a weakness in a hypervisor, can affect a large number of users, and attackers can exploit this to gain unauthorized access to the organization’s infrastructure.
Understanding Cloud Exploitation and Its Impact
Lastly, a threat actor may exploit a weakness in a file transfer application to gain initial access to the victim’s cloud infrastructure. This is typically done by opportunistic scanning of the victim’s server software and does not target specific industry sectors or regions. Once an attacker has gained access, they can then deploy other malicious tools to exploit the cloud computing environment.
Understanding Cloud Exploitation and its impact
A successful cloud exploitation attack can cause many problems for the victim, such as financial damage, reputational harm and regulatory penalties. A ransomware attack, for example, can cost the company millions of dollars to repair its systems and restore its data. It can also lead to a public relations disaster and damage employee morale.
Best practices to Prevent Cloud Exploitation
A cyberattack against a company’s cloud infrastructure can disrupt operations, impact revenue and create a loss of trust with customers and clients. Despite the risks, companies can avoid these attacks by understanding the most common types of cloud malware and taking steps to protect against them. This includes implementing an agentless cloud security solution that can protect against a wide variety of cloud-based threats. The right solution can help protect against the most significant threats – and save organizations time, money and resources in the long run.
To protect their cloud assets, companies should implement multi-factor authentication, strong passwords and rotation, and strict identity and access controls. They should also employ the principle of least privilege, ensuring that users have only the level of permissions they need to perform their jobs effectively. This will help to prevent malicious insiders from misusing a company’s resources and exposing data to hackers.