Cloud Misconfigurations: The Silent Risk & How to Prevent Them

Cloud misconfigurations are deficiencies in cloud posture due to several factors such as manual configuration errors, access permission rules, unmonitored backups or snapshots, misconfigured APIs and so on. 

Cloud computing changed the way organizations operate their digital IT infrastructure. It offers flexibility, scalability, and efficient management of operational costs but rapid adoption of cloud comes with its baggage. Cloud computing posture runs the risk of cloud misconfigurations.

Cloud misconfigurations contribute 30% of security breaches as per 2024 analysis presented by Checkpoint. 

In this article we will learn more in detail about cloud misconfigurations are a silent risk for cloud computing and how to prevent them?

What are Cloud Misconfigurations     

Cloud misconfigurations are increasing 10% every year as per Palo Alto network security report.  Cloud misconfigurations occur due to deficiencies in configurations, over permissive rules, poor governance, lack of insight into unaccounted assets such as backups or snapshots etc.

Manual configurations are one of the prime causes of such misconfigurations contributed to rapid deployments, DevOps, and Infrastructure as code (IaC) inconsistent practices keeping security secondary in priority. Developers often split environments and copy configurations without engaging into proper reviews. Common manual configuration errors are open S3 buckets, over permissive roles violating the principle of ‘Least privilege principle’. Misconfigured APIs etc.

The complexity of multi-cloud environments makes it more complex due to visibility gaps, fragmented security tools, and misalignment to security policies. 

Significant Breaches

Some of the popular breaches happened due to cloud misconfigurations are 

• Year 2019 – Capital One – improperly configured S3 bucket led to exfiltration of 100 million records by hacker. The cost of breach was over $300 million 

• Year 2021 – Accenture – unsecured cloud storage exposed sensitive information related to customers leading to data breach 

• Year 2021 – Microsoft – 30 million records leaked due to misconfigured Power Apps 

• Year 2023 – Toyota Motors – disclosed a cloud misconfiguration had exposed vehicle data and customer information for a period of over eight years impacting around 260,000 customers

• Year 2024 – Snowflake – 160 customers impacted due to misconfigured MFA and poor IAM controls 

All these breaches clearly indicate that cloud misconfigurations need urgent attention and these are not isolated incidents and have the potential to disrupt businesses. 

How to Prevent Cloud Misconfigurations?

To mitigate risks of cloud misconfigurations organizations need to adopt robust security practices. In this section we will look at some strategies which can help organizations to improve their cloud security posture:

1. Principle of ‘Least privileges’ is the basic fundamental for secure environments. Role based access control (RBAC) ensures only users have access to resources to which they require to perform their job function.
2. Continuous Monitoring and Auditing – since cloud environments are dynamic in nature and consistently evolving to accommodate business requirements it is important to have a consistent monitoring and review of audit logs to identify any malicious activity. The proactive approach of cloud monitoring help in identifying misconfigurations in advance before they get exploited
3. Configuration automation manual configurations are prone to errors. Automation tools such as CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure as code (IaC) templates such as Terraform, Ansible help in standardization and automating cloud configurations minimizing the risk of misconfigurations keeping security controls intact.
4. Security training and awareness on periodic intervals help IT and security teams to keep abreast with latest threats 
5. Encryption and data masking – sensitive data fields need to be masked and encrypted both at rest and in transit. Masking helps to protect data from accidental exposure due to misconfiguration.
6. Ongoing compliance checks – cloud environments need to be aligned to security frameworks such as CCM (Cloud control matrix), NIST or ISO27001. Regular compliance checks ensure gaps are identified at earliest and help in maintaining secure cloud posture. 

Conclusion 

Cloud security posture management is a shared responsibility across cross functional teams – IT security, application teams, operations teams. It is more than just deployment of sophisticated tools more about building a secure practice culture in the organization with better collaboration between cross functional teams and importance of secure coding and adherence to security protocols.