Benefits and risks of cloud platforms

What are the benefits and risks of cloud platforms?

Security benefits and risks of cloud platforms / cloud storage are important points to note. For starters, cloud systems can increase availability. By enabling automated scaling, backup, and DDOS mitigation, properly planned and executed cloud architecture may increase redundancy, minimise latency, and increase availability. If a client selects IaaS, the shared security architecture forces the customer to acquire and configure these features—a potential weakness. However, SaaS and PaaS services are often strengthened and improved in terms of availability.

Second, cloud platforms can increase secrecy by enabling identification, authentication, and access control; giving tools to implement the concept of least privilege, and securing distant connections with robust encryption. In the case of IaaS, its implementation is once again left to the customer.

Third, cloud platforms enable automated backup, restoration, and versioning, which can increase data integrity.

How does cloud security work?

Vulnerability detection, risk assessment and security testing are not covered by cloud platforms, however, patch management (the removal of vulnerabilities by replacing defective components) is available to SaaS and PaaS customers.

Cloud hosting can also serve as a central point of entry for a company’s CIRT, SOC, or CERT to do security monitoring. Such monitoring may be impractical for smaller organisations that run their own servers. This monitoring can aid in the detection of unauthorised access, privilege escalation, and other odd behaviours that are frequently linked with malicious hacking. Watch the video below to discover more about how cloud security may benefit an organisation.

The risks of migrating internal resources to the cloud

• Malware injection into cloud services and supply chains (including DevOps and CI/CD pipelines)
• DDOS attacks launched by cloud-hosted bots
• Customer misconfiguration of cloud services
• Despite redundant systems, cloud infrastructure fails (on a vast scale). Privacy violations are committed by cloud providers, other cloud tenants, and third parties via sandbox escape, blue pill, VM introspection, and other tactics.