Securing the cloud has been an unwieldy and daunting task since the beginning: The idea of using an enterprise architecture built on delivering computing services over the internet naturally represents a unique threat surface. But cloud computing is rapidly becoming a ubiquitous part of the IT landscape, with Gartner estimating that more than 95% of new digital workloads will be deployed on cloud-native platforms by 2025—aa dramatic increase from 30% in 2021.
This growing reliance on the cloud is bringing new security challenges to an already complex problem, experts say. That’s because as enterprise IT stakeholders’ understanding of and confidence in implementing the cloud has improved, so has the sophistication of threat actors that want to leverage its complexity for their own malicious intent.
Indeed, when it comes to cloud breaches, most IT professionals agree that it’s not a case not of “if” one will happen at an organization, but “when” — and enterprises need to be prepared for when that day will come, experts said. This is mainly because of the sheer scope of the cloud, which — although it has both positive and negative aspects — makes its security posture precarious, Dan Benjamin, CEO and co-founder of Dig Security, notes.
“The average enterprise today uses close to 2,000 different cloud services,” he says. “As a result, cloud footprints are exploding alongside the sheer volume of data stored in the cloud.” He adds, “Cloud assets are also easily deployed outside of an organization’s security policies, which creates misconfiguration risks. IT and security teams may not know that these assets exist.”
The best security professionals can do to mitigate and respond to security threats to the cloud is to arm themselves with the knowledge and expertise of the current threat horizon. To help enterprises better secure their diverse and complex cloud environments,
