The Top Cloud Security Challenges in 2023
While many organizations have been using cloud-based solutions for many years, they often still struggle to properly monitor, manage, and secure their cloud-based infrastructure. In fact, according to Check Point’s 2023 Cloud Security Report, 76% of organizations are concerned or extremely concerned about the security of their cloud environments, and 24% have experienced a cloud security incident within the last year.
In 2023, these are some of the biggest challenges that companies are facing as they try to secure their cloud deployments.
Misconfiguration
Misconfigurations are a major public cloud security threat, according to 59% of cloud users. Of those cloud users that experienced a security incident within the last 12 months, 19% of the time, the incident involved a misconfigured resource or account.
Misconfigurations remain a significant cloud security challenge because of the wide range of provider-specific configuration settings. Companies — and their employees — unfamiliar with cloud environments can accidentally misconfigure these settings, leaving cloud environments vulnerable to attack. This problem is exacerbated by the prevalence of multi-cloud environments, where companies must properly configure settings for several different cloud providers.
Workloads in the Cloud
Companies are increasingly moving their workloads to the cloud. In 2023, 39% of organizations have over half of their workloads in the cloud, compared to 35% the previous year. In the next 12-18 months, 58% of companies plan to reach this milestone.
This transition of workloads to the cloud increases the complexity of cloud security and access management. More workloads distributed across multiple cloud environments require a complex web of entitlements to effectively implement least privilege access and minimize potential security risks to the organization and its cloud-based solutions.
Exfiltration of Sensitive Data
As companies increasingly move to the cloud, these environments contain larger volumes of sensitive data. For 51% of organizations, data exfiltration is considered a major security threat of public clouds, and 13% of cloud incidents within the last 12 months involved files or data being inappropriately shared by a user.
Cloud environments are uniquely vulnerable to the exfiltration of sensitive data. They are a component of the corporate network that is directly accessible via the public Internet, making it easier for an attacker to search for misconfigurations and other vulnerabilities. Also, cloud environments are designed to support data sharing, making it easy for a user to accidentally share a file with an unauthorized user or to misconfigure security settings in a way that leaves data exposed.
Multi-Cloud Security
Most companies have adopted cloud computing, and the vast majority of cloud users have multi-cloud deployments. In fact, 87% of organizations have multi-cloud deployments, and 72% have hybrid cloud spanning public and private cloud infrastructure.
These multi-cloud environments are much more difficult to secure due to their complexity and the need to properly configure the unique settings of various cloud providers. Some of the main challenges that companies face when securing multi-cloud environments include:
- Access to necessary skill sets to deploy and manage solutions across all environments (58%)
- Ensuring data privacy and protection across all environments (49%)
- Understanding how to integrate various solutions (49%)
- Understanding service integration options (45%)
- Limited visibility and control (44%)
Cloud Migration
While most companies have an existing cloud footprint, many are moving additional assets to the cloud. The cloud offers various benefits for an organization, and a well-designed, secure cloud deployment can be more resilient, scalable, and flexible than a traditional on-prem data center.
However, the process of moving assets from on-prem to the cloud can be a significant security challenge for an organization. In addition to ensuring the security of corporate data and applications before and after the move, companies also need to design a secure cloud migration process to ensure that these resources are protected during the intermediate stages as well.
DevSecOps, CIEM, and Unified Security Management Adoption
Companies face various cloud security challenges, and there are processes and solutions that can help them to manage these security risks. However, many organizations are not taking full advantage of their capabilities. Some examples include:
- DevSecOps: DevSecOps builds security into automated development processes and pipelines, reducing the risk that vulnerabilities will reach production systems where they can be exploited by attackers. Only 19% of companies have a comprehensive DevSecOps program that spans their entire organization.
- Cloud Information Entitlement Management (CIEM): CIEM solutions help organizations to manage entitlements and access controls at scale across their cloud infrastructures. Only 40% of organizations have CIEM integrated as part of their Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solution.
- Unified Cloud Security Management (UCSM): UCSM solutions converge various security functions into a single solution and dashboard, making it easier for analysts to maintain visibility and manage the corporate cloud security posture. 90% of surveyed professionals claim that this would be moderately to extremely helpful for them.
Cloud Security Policy Management
A cloud security policy defines the strategies, procedures, and controls that an organization uses to manage access, protect data, and maintain cloud compliance. These policies should be relatively few in number and clear to avoid oversights or security gaps.
However, many companies have excessive numbers of security policies in their cloud environments. Over a quarter have more than 20 cloud policies, indicating a complex environment that is likely prone to security challenges. At the other extreme, 30% have 0-5 cloud security policies, indicating that they are likely not properly managing security risks and compliance responsibilities in their cloud environments.
Insecure Interfaces/APIs
APIs are ubiquitous in the cloud, especially as microservices and containerized applications become more common. However, they also can introduce significant security challenges, as indicated by the 51% of recipients that point to insecure interfaces/APIs as a major public cloud security challenge.
These API issues can stem from multiple different causes. In some cases, companies have shadow APIs that are not officially documented and, therefore, not properly covered by a corporate security strategy. In others, APIs may be designed in insecure ways, such as providing excessive, potentially sensitive data in response to user requests.
Cloud Configuration
Cloud providers offer a range of cloud-native tools and configuration settings that customers can use to configure and secure their cloud environments. 62% of organizations use these cloud-native tools to manage their cloud infrastructure configurations.
However, while these tools are convenient, the need to manage configurations across complex, multi-cloud environments — including both on-prem and cloud-based infrastructure — can be overwhelming. In fact, 72% of users must use at least 3 different dashboards to manage their company’s cloud policies. In over 10% of cases, this number is 7 or more. Each additional dashboard decreases efficiency and visibility and increases the risk that a misconfiguration or security gap will leave the corporate cloud vulnerable to a potential attack.
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