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Despite increasing levels of adoption byorganisationsof all sizes, cloud solutions continue to be plagued bymisconceptions about their security. Its still commonly assumed that the cloud offers a less secure optioncompared toon-premises infrastructure.So, how does it really shape up, and what security challenges face the cloud in 2020?

While businessesthatkeep their dataon-site often feel as though they have more control over its security, the flaw in that plan is usually a lack of in-house expertise.Thecyber-skills gapis widely documented, leavingalmost half of UK businesses unable to deal with even basic security tasks.Unless you can afford adedicated,specialisedon-site security team, chances are your data would be as safe, if not safer, storedby a public cloud provider with access to the best resources and expertise.

The UK 2020 Databerg Reportshowsthat the perception of cloud security isslowlychanging. In 2015, 77% of businesses expressed concerns about cloud security,and this has seen someimprovement over the last five years although59% remain unconvinced. According to the report, the likely reason this mistrustpersists is unconnected to the physical capabilities of the cloud. Instead it lieswiththe fact that data stored in the cloud always remains the responsibility of theorganisation, rather than the cloud provider. Ifa data breach occurs, the financial and reputational repercussionsfall directly to theorganisation.

Its therefore important that businesses seek out a vendor they can trust, with the knowledge and expertise to best securetheirsensitivedata. Equally important is that businesses educate their employees onbest-practiceprotocols and procedures human error remains one of the biggest causes of data breaches. With the rise of remote working and BYOD, more and more dataisaccessed via the cloud, making it harder fororganisationsto keep an eye on data security. In 2020,31% of employeestook business information outside of theorganisationvia cloud storage, up from 21% in 2015.

While the cloud does not inherently provide additional risk, it remains a target for cybercriminals.Backinthe beginning of2020, as hackers scrabbled to take advantage of the pandemic,cloud-based attacks rose by 630%between January and April.InVerizons 2020 Data Breach InvestigationsReport however, we can see thatcloud security still comparesfavourablyto on-premises alternatives. This year, cloud assets accounted for 24% of breaches, compared to 70% of on-prem assets.

Of those cloud breaches recorded, 77% involvedcompromisedcredentials.Rather than being a demonstration ofinherentweakness in the clouds security, this serves to illustrate the huge growth in social engineering attacks, such asphishing scams, that aim to steal privileged access credentials. The quickest and easiest way for cybercriminals to access systems (cloud-based or otherwise), credentialtheftis fast becoming one of the worst offenders for causes of data breaches. According to thelatestPonemon Institute Cost of a Data Breach Report, a fifth of all data breaches are now the result of stolen or compromised credentials.Worryingly, this was found to impact the average cost of a breachby almost $1 million.

ThePonemonreport also states that misconfigured cloud servers tie with compromised credentials as the most frequentthreat vector.This is confirmed by Verizons findings which show thatmisconfiguration errors have increased since 2017, to the point where they are now more common than malware and outranked onlyby hacking.

With these statistics in mind, its easy to understand whythose59% oforganisationsremain wary of the cloud.The result ofhumanerror during setup, cloud misconfigurationcan leave data exposed or present vulnerabilities that couldlaterbe exploited by threat actors. Its important to make sure your cloud is configured byexperts, regularly audited, updated and patched.Responsibility and configuration of the cloud is sharedbetweenanorganisationand their service provider, so its important to make sure youre working with the right partner.

UKFast offers a truly unique, tailored approach to cloud hosting, with a range of public and private cloud servers and a team of security specialists on hand to keep your data safe. Speak to a cloud expert today on 0800 073 0317.

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How secure is the cloud in 2020? - Techerati