Trends in Cybersecurity (Cloud Computing)

Trends in Cybersecurity (Cloud Computing)

Cloud Computing

Cybersecurity is the state of protection against unauthorized use of electronic data. It is also measures used to achieve this state (Andreasson, 2012). There are many trends in this profession and some of them include data breaches as a the major cyber threat, cybersecurity skills gap, cloud security issues, integration and automation of cybersecurity, growing awareness of the importance of cybersecurity, mobile devices as a major cybersecurity risk, increased impact of state sponsored cyberattacks, artificial intelligence on both sides of the barricade, risks related to internet of things devices and the evergreen phishing threat. However, this paper is going to focus on three major issues. The first issue will be the increased impact of state-sponsored cyberattacks. The other issue will be cloud security issues and lastly data breaches as the top cyber threat.

Providers of cloud computing make information technology applications available. This is achieved by making these services be metered to the customers who can then access them through the internet. One risk of cloud computing is obviously loss of data. This happens when security of a cloud service provider is compromised or breached. This is done by hackers who gain access to personal or intellectual property. Although lack of resources was the leading issue in cloud computing, right now the leading problem is security. Hacked interfaces, compromised credentials, account hijacking are all factors that have alleviated security concerns in cloud computing. This makes cybersecurity capabilities to be constantly improved so as to cater some of these problems.

When auditing a cloud provider’s privacy and security laws, one is supposed to make sure that compliance issues are well taken care of. An organization has to make sure that it complies with the regulations and standards set. This is irrespective of where the organization data is stored. When it comes to storage, the provider should also make sure that they have very strict data recovery processes. Risks experienced in cloud computing have become very real and this requires for a BI cloud tool to be implemented (Choi, 2005). The tool will leverage on the proper security measures to be achieved.

Data breaches are continuously being reported as the top and major cybersecurity concern. This is very likely to continue for long since personal data and information will always remain to be a valuable commodity majorly in the black market. Advanced state sponsored cyberattacks are a major part of the global security issues. Cybercriminals who are not officially sponsored by the state can execute high-profile data breaches, spread misinformation, perform DDos attacks, steal industrial and political secrets, and influence global events and opinions, silence voices which are unfavorable.

Cloud computing is one of the major cybersecurity trends and this paper will look at the impact it has on the cybersecurity field. Cloud computing brings about several cybersecurity issues like identity theft, data breaches and malware infections, compliance violations and diminished customer trust and even potential revenue loss. However, when cloud computing is implemented correctly, it is just as reliable as any other traditional IT (Kostopoulos, 2012). Anyone using the cloud is at a potential risk of a cyber-attack such as distributed denial of service (DDos) attack. This is where hackers crash a server by sending unprecedented traffic to a web-based application. There may also be some compliance and legal issues since it can be difficult to keep track of who can access information.

Phishing and social engineering attack is another issue in cloud computing. Cloud computing is an open system and this makes social engineering and phishing attacks common. Once login information is acquired, any malicious user may break into the system easily provided the system itself is available from anywhere. Employees of the cloud should be made aware about such attacks enough to enable them to avoid and detect them. Although a risk of a data breach is not unique when it comes to cloud computing, it is ranked as the top most concern for customers using the cloud. DDos causes significant risks to the cloud customers and its providers like reputational damage, long service outages and even exposure of the customer’s data to malicious individuals.

An API is most likely to be the initial point where attackers may use as an entry point. This is the front door to an application. Security weaknesses of an API should be tested through pen tests. Account hijacking is the other cyber security issue related to cloud computing. This might be achieved through stolen credentials. Such information may make the attackers gain illegal access to critical places of the cloud computing services. This may compromise availability of such services, integrity and confidentiality. Also, advanced persistent threats target cloud environments. However, public cloud services are used to conduct such attacks (Peter W. Singer, 2014). Cloud computing was chosen in this research since this is where many cyber-attacks take place.

References

Andreasson, K. J. (2012). cybersecurity: Public Sector Threats and Responses.

Choi, L. V. (2005). Cybersecurity and Homeland Security.

Kostopoulos, G. (2012). Cyberspace and Cybersecurity.

Peter W. Singer, A. F. (2014). Cybersecurity: What everyone needs to know.