Organizations globally across industries are aiming to turbocharge their efficiencies through easier storage, processing, and access data, and cloud computing has emerged as an effective way to achieve that. It is one of the most widely adopted ways for organizations to balance efficiency while scaling their operations with a hybrid mode of work.  

In 2025, over 78% of organizations reported using two or more cloud providers (Fortinet Cloud Security Report 2025). What is cloud computing? How can organizations be secured against the threats to cloud computing? Let us explore answers to such questions.

What is cloud computing?

Cloud computing encompasses all the hardware, software, networking, and services necessary to enable users to utilize storage and processing power over the internet or private network without having any physical hardware.

Cloud computing vs cyber security

Cloud computing comprises all the IT components to develop and deliver services to users, where they can access storage or processing power without having any hardware over the internet or a private network. Cybersecurity is all about keeping data and infrastructure, including computer systems, infrastructure, and data, secure from risks and threats. 

What are some of the common risks and threats to cloud computing?

As workloads over the cloud expand and insecure employee behaviors become more prevalent with more users over the cloud, cybercriminals have shifted to the cloud. They are using generative AI to target cloud-based users through threats that are not just unpredictable but also undetectable.

There is a rise in cloud-related data breaches, with over 65% of organizations having reported experiencing cloud-related breaches in the past year (Checkpoint Cloud Security Report 2025).

Let us explore some of the common risks and threats to cloud computing:

Misconfigurations

Cloud environments get more complex as organizations keep adding new tools to address risks across their cloud environments.  It causes the challenge of tech sprawl, leading to configuration drift.

It also occurs when multiple settings across the cloud aren’t configured due to a lack of expertise. These vulnerabilities are exploited by cybercriminals to orchestrate cyber attacks by achieving multiple malicious objectives, like gaining unauthorized access to data, deploying malware, etc.

Some of the common misconfigurations often exploited by cybercriminals include open storage buckets, overly permissive IAM (Identity and Access Management) policies, and publicly exposed resources that contain sensitive information.

Ransomware

There is a rise in ransomware attacks targeted at cloud environments, with cybercriminals using AI and automation to create unique strains of self-spreading ransomware that directly target organizations’ sensitive cloud-hosted data.

They are using tactics like supply chain attacks, multi-extortion ransomware attacks, and coming up with attacks that can even evade EDR.

There is also a rise in cloud-assisted malware, where a cybercriminal uses phishing email to deliver infostealer or ransomware using commonly used cloud services like Google Drive and Dropbox.

Targeted attacks on MSPs

Cybercriminals are targeting Managed Service Providers that offer cloud services so they can target their multiple customers who use their solutions.

Another reason why MSPs are prime targets is that they have defenses that are less mature, with lots of undiscovered weaknesses that can be exploited by attackers.

Recently, there has been a rise in AI-powered targeted attacks, where MSPs struggle to keep up with the complexity of attacks. For example, an attacker can create a zero-day malware using AI that can automatically exploit undiscovered security weaknesses without getting detected by an MSP’s defenses.

Insider threats

Any intentional or unintentional access given by employees to cloud resources can pose a significant risk to cloud security. Gartner has predicted that in 2025, 99% of all failures in cloud security will be rooted in human error.

Insider threats are among the most dangerous threats to cloud as they are not just difficult to detect but also allow threat actors to easily bypass traditional security measures with already available permissions.

Challenges like the increasing complexity of IT environments, adoption of new technologies, and inadequate security measures make it difficult for organizations to gain early discovery of such threats. 

DoS and DDoS

Denial of Service and Distributed Denial of Service attacks on cloud environments are causing massive disruption of operations globally. These attacks target draining out an organization’s cloud-based resources and disabling their legitimate services, posing a significant threat to operations and services.

What makes them dangerous is that they are growing in frequency and size, with 20.5 million DDoS attacks blocked in the first quarter of 2025 and 4.8 billion packets per second (the largest packet rate attack on record) detected and mitigated in April 2025 by Cloudflare.

Non-compliance

Organizations have increased their dependence on multiple cloud service providers to fulfill their multiple needs, and this has, in turn, made their cloud environment more complex, making it highly challenging for them to detect and address misconfigurations.

It is why organizations relying on complex cloud environments often face higher risks of non-compliance due to undiscovered misconfigurations and unassessed policies (like weak IAM policies), especially as regulations have become tighter with stricter consequences of non-compliance.

Other risks and threats to cloud computing

• Insecure APIs,
• third party vulnerabilities
• poor identity & access management practices
• shadow IT

5 essential network security tips for cloud computing

Securing the cloud has become one of the top back-of-the-mind things for organizational leaders, with most of them losing confidence in cloud security.

64% of organizations have indicated they lack confidence in their organization’s ability to handle real-time threat detection, with 92% of respondents having reported being concerned about the rising volume of cloud security risks(Fortinet Cloud Security Report 2025).

The following are some of the network security tips that organizations can use to effectively secure cloud environments:

1. Sticking to best practices

Sticking to cybersecurity basics does wonders in establishing a decent level of security.

The following are some of the hygiene measures that can improve the effectiveness of cloud security considerably:

• Implementing a strong password policy where everyone is required to set strong passwords, change passwords on a regular basis, and use password managers for password management wherever possible
• Enabling Multi-Factor Authentication can prevent most automated attacks on accounts, securing them from unauthorized access to their account
• Establishing a mechanism to report phishing and insider threat incidents
• Deploying role-based access controls to limit access to sensitive information on the cloud

2. Continuous monitoring and assessment of the network

• Organizations can continuously monitor and assess their cloud infrastructure and network for misconfigurations and vulnerabilities.
• They can take the assistance of cybersecurity experts who can help conduct a detailed assessment of the security of cloud infrastructures using different attacking methods to evaluate applications, networks, databases, policies, and configurations for risks.
• They can also help automate monitoring and assessment of the network, allowing their team to focus on critical security matters that need attention.

3. Consolidate cybersecurity solutions

• Organizations can mitigate tech sprawl and the security risks associated with it by consolidating solutions through a centralized platform.
• It will not just help them achieve much-needed visibility, which is a critical determinant of the effectiveness of cybersecurity operations, but also help them take quick action on risks and threats across the cloud environments.
• A centralized platform will also help them proactively address misconfigurations and other security risks that could lead to non-compliance.

4. Secure your APIs

APIs are often the lowest-hanging fruit for attackers, becoming the entry points to cloud environments. Therefore, it is critical to pentest the APIs on the cloud to ensure that there is strong authentication and encryption for all API communication. It is critical to ensure that each API requests are validated and changes to the API are documented to monitor and detect suspicious activities.

5. Keep data encrypted, backed up, and deploying honeypots

It is critical to use strong encryption for data in transit and at rest to prevent unauthorized access to data. It also helps improve compliance with global privacy and data security regulations, like GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS.

Some of the renowned technologies that can be used to encrypt data are AES-256, HSMs, disk-level encryption (for data at rest), TLS, SSL, VPN, IPsec, and HTTPS (for data in transit). Keeping data backed up regularly helps with quicker recovery and resumption of operations. Organizations can take the assistance of cybersecurity experts to deploy honeypots that can catch unauthorized attempts to access data.  

How SharkStriker help organizations secure their cloud environments?

SharkStriker helps organizations secure their operations, data, and people on the cloud by offering them a dedicated 24/7 team of security and compliance experts who assess, configure, and manage their cloud security stack. They help strengthen their cloud defense with detailed security and compliance recommendations based on a comprehensive assessment of cloud infrastructure.

Their purpose-built open-architecture security platform, STRIEGO, easily integrates organizations’ cloud security solutions across different vendors over a vendor-agnostic layer, allowing them the flexibility to add solutions and assets monitored as they grow. It also offers multiple customizable role-based dashboards that offer organizations complete visibility of cloud security posture with insights in real-time.

It comes with a machine learning powered detection engine that automatically monitors the cloud infrastructure for threats and responds to risks and suspicious activities and predicts the presence of threats like advanced malware using analytics and multi-sourced threat intelligence.

It can automatically take cybersecurity actions (like isolation and remediation without the need for the involvement of human security experts. Allowing the team to focus on what is critical without being fatigued by a flood of alerts.

Learn more about SharkStriker’s STRIEGO and cloud security services.