Remote Work Needs a More Secure Cloud
Cloud computing was vital to the success of remote work initiatives during the pandemic. However, the cloud is having a bit of a security crisis right now, caused in part because of the swift transition to remote work.
According to a new cloud security study from Netwrix, 54% of organizations that store data in the cloud reported security incidents in 2020. At a time when cloud computing may have reached its peak importance, nearly two-thirds of organizations reported that they will remove sensitive data from the cloud, compared to less than half the year before. This could end up reversing the business continuity companies relied on when they made the move from on-site to work-from-home.
“If a company decides to ‘uncloud’ sensitive data employees need on a regular basis, they risk losing the balance between availability, efficiency and security by over-complicating security protocols for staff and risking to expose data to other threats,” explained Ilia Sotnikov, vice president of product management, Netwrix, in an email interview.
“Whether company’s data in stored in the cloud or in a data center, if it is a high-profile target, attackers will find a way to compromise its security. So, migration wouldn’t always offset the costs and risks associated with it,” Sotnikov said.
The Security Threats
On the flip side, data theft and data leakage (that can be a result of ransomware and phishing or an isolated incident) took the longest time to both detect and resolve, Sotnikov pointed out. Theft from hackers can take years to detect.
How Remote Work Increased Risk
“Swift transition to the cloud and subsequent security tradeoffs in 2020 led to an array of issues, such as cloud misconfigurations and privilege escalation,” said Sotnikov.
So why were there security tradeoffs? Sotnikov blamed it on a lack of understanding of the shared responsibility model, a global shortage of IT pros skilled at cloud management and security combined with lack of visibility into cloud design and workloads.
“Also, respondents outlined three top challenges that leave them unable to properly secure their cloud environments: lack of staff, financial resources and expertise,” she added. “These hardships force security teams to operate in a reactive, rather than proactive, mode.”
Adding to the problem, most IT teams didn’t have their cloud security budgets increased, despite relying on cloud computing more than ever during the pandemic. Because of this, IT and security staff had to juggle ever-limited resources to pull the company through an increasingly sophisticated threat landscape.
Minimizing the Risks
To minimize risks to data in the cloud, IT and security teams should review their overall WFH plan, if they have one, to see whether the tradeoffs created security gaps. They should start by documenting what access to which systems has changed since mid-March 2020, what types of data those systems contain and identify risks to critical data.
It’s also important to know where the security risks in the cloud are. “It was quite surprising that incidents that included supply chain compromise had the most impact on organizations; they were more likely to result in compliance fines, decrease in new sales, change in senior leadership, and even lawsuits, than any other incidents,” said Sotnikov.
To avoid these damaging consequences, she recommended organizations pay closer attention to the less-secure elements in their supply network. Business leaders should ask partners to prove that they take all necessary security measures, such as third-party audits or confirmation of usage of certain security services and/or tools. Organizations can also limit their liability under their contracts with partners and make them accountable in the event that they experience a data breach.
Also, organizations should rely on proven security best practices to mitigate these risks, such as network segmentation, continuous auditing for malicious activity across the environment and alerting to suspicious actions.
“To overcome the challenge of limited resources, I advise organizations to outsource IT tasks to MSSPs or/and invest in tools that automate routine security tasks, such as data discovery and user activity auditing that will provide visibility into their cloud environments and help minimize risks to data,” she said.
“Our research underlined that, to ensure adequate attention to real risks, it is of critical importance to look beyond probability of a breach or classic consequences it can pose, such as unplanned expenses or compliance fines,” Sotnikov added. “When assessing security risks, security leaders are advised to think business and include the long-term consequences of data breaches on the business as a whole.”
