Businesses Will Face These 4 Cloud Security Challenges in 2021

As threats have sophisticated and evolved, new attacks emerge and it becomes more important than ever for businesses to embrace security first mentalities. With that being said, here are some of the challenges that we’re facing this year in terms of cloud security.

Lack of IT Knowledge and Expertise

According to the “Cloud Adoption Practices & Priorities Survey Report” from Cloud Security Alliance, 34% of companies are currently avoiding cloud security as a service because they don’t believe their business managers and IT personnel have the knowledge and experience to handle the demands of cloud computing.

Enterprises now have an average of three or four clouds that creates added layers of complexity that require technical competence and relevant experience. This speaks to a larger trend that we will expect to rise in the coming months and years. 

Data Breaches

There are no concerns more serious than a data breach and it is something every organization is focused on. However, only a few of them have the resources and strategies in place to truly discuss it in a worthy manner thus makes it a critical concern and something that has to be dealt with in a preventative and proactive way.

Failure to deal with data properly opens your business up to big risks -not to mention data breaches fines, penalties and serious violations of customer trust because it’s on you to protect your employee and customer’s data regardless of what any service level agreement says. 

Cloud Migration Issues

Cloud migration is happening but it has to be handled properly otherwise it exposes the businesses to different risks. According to a report from Daily Host News, the four biggest challenges that the businesses are facing right now are visibility into infrastructure security (43%), compliance (38%), setting security policies (35%) and security failing to keep up with the pace of change in applications (35%). As a result of this, security professionals and IT people are feeling overwhelmed by everything that’s asked of them.

A much more straightforward and simpler migration strategy will help businesses manage this transition flawlessly. Trying to accomplish everything at once is a big mistake. The migration process should be broken down into stages to reduce the risk for critical errors that could lead to vulnerabilities or corrupt the data. 

Insider Threats

It’s a good business practice to trust your employees but unfortunately, many businesses take this trust too far or fail to bring the driving factors behind their trust on the front end. According to research, insider threats are responsible for a huge 43% percent of all breaches that are half accidental and half intentional.

Businesses need to think about limiting who can access what and about access management. Access to data sources and cloud applications should be given on a required basis. No one should have more access than is needed to complete their job-related responsibilities.