What are cloud vulnerabilities?

Cloud vulnerabilities are weaknesses, oversights, or gaps in cloud infrastructure that attackers or unauthorized users can exploit to gain access into an organization’s environment and potentially cause harm. 

As companies increase their use of cloud hosting for storage and computing, the risk of an attack on their cloud services increases because the cloud presents a highly dynamic and distributed landscape. As noted in the CrowdStrike 2024 Global Threat Report, there was a 75% increase in cloud environment intrusions in 2023. The report also revealed a 110% spike in cases involving cloud-conscious threat actors, which are threat actors that are aware of the ability to compromise cloud workloads and use this knowledge to abuse features unique to the cloud. Oftentimes, threat actors obtain valid credentials to access a victim’s cloud environment to then further their attack, typically leveraging tools that the organization has approved.  

Poor cloud vulnerability management can cause reputational damage if customer data is compromised, leading to loss of business. 

This article will cover the eight most important cloud vulnerabilities your organization might face and suggest tips to mitigate them.

What are the most common cloud vulnerabilities?

The top eight cloud vulnerabilities include: 

1. Cloud misconfigurations

2. Insecure APIs

3. Lack of visibility

4. Shadow IT

5. Poor access management

6. Malicious insiders

7. Zero-day vulnerabilities 

8. Human error

#1: Cloud misconfigurations

Cloud misconfigurations are one of the most common vulnerabilities organizations face. Misconfigurations can range from excessive account permissions to insecure backups, and they are often caused by speed of deployment, limited knowledge of good practices, or a lack of comprehensive visibility into cloud infrastructure.

To minimize this threat:

• Use third-party tools to scan your infrastructure and quickly identify misconfigurations that pose an active risk in production.

• Always have your data storage set to private by default for your cloud resource.

• When using Terraform or another infrastructure as code (IaC) framework, make sure to have an established IaC file review process.

• Always use HTTPS instead of HTTP. The same goes for any other protocol; for example, you should use SFTP instead of FTP. You should also use the latest version of SSL/TLS.

• Restrict all inbound and outbound ports if they are not needed for a given machine fronted on the internet.

• Keep secrets like API keys and passwords in one — and only one — place using a secure secrets management solution (e.g., AWS Secrets Manager).

#2: Insecure APIs

APIs are widespread in modern software development, as they are used in microservices, applications, and website backends. They must handle requests received from mobile devices, applications, webpages, and third parties — as well as requests from bots, spammers, and hackers. This is why having a secure API is critical to reducing your attack surface.

Malicious API requests can take many forms. Some of the most common include:

• Code and query injection (SQL injection, command injection)

• Parameter tampering 

• Unrestricted file uploads

Many cloud providers offer in-house solutions for protecting APIs, but there are a few easy steps you can take on your own to mitigate API security risks.

To minimize this threat:

• Have a web application firewall (WAF) to filter requests by IP address or HTTP header info and detect code injection attacks; WAFs also let you set response quotas per user or other metrics.

• Employ input validation and sanitization.

• Leverage rate limiting and throttling.

• Follow the principle of data minimization.

#3: Lack of visibility

As your use of cloud services increases, so does the scale of your infrastructure. When companies are using thousands of instances of cloud services, it can be difficult to track how they are all connected or see which ones are running in production at any given time. Visibility into the state of your entire infrastructure must be easy and convenient to access.

Lack of cloud infrastructure visibility is a major issue that makes it difficult to take action on a threat, since finding the source of a vulnerability is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Both security and DevOps teams must maintain continuous visibility into their real-time cloud security posture, since security teams have insight into risk and DevOps teams have ownership of cloud resources and applications.

To minimize this threat:

• Ensure you have continuous, real-time visibility of your cloud security posture.

• Implement tools such as a cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP), which is an all-in-one platform that simplifies the process of monitoring, detecting, and remediating potential cloud security threats and vulnerabilities.

#4: Shadow IT

One of the main reasons that organizations lack visibility into their cloud infrastructure is the use of shadow IT, which refers to the practice of creating cloud resources or any other digital asset without proper approval from the IT department. Shadow IT is prevalent when companies experience rapid growth, as employees may bypass the approval process to minimize disruptions to their day-to-day operations. 

Shadow IT presents security risks because unauthorized assets are often not properly secured due to negligence — for example, employees may keep default passwords or misconfigurations because these assets were created outside of an approved process.

To minimize this threat:

• Regularly conduct audits across the business to identify and understand organizational needs.

• Leverage continuous, real-time monitoring to gain visibility and control of all your devices. 

• Establish proper security policies and enforce these policies on all resources that are created, ensuring the company stays compliant. 

#5: Poor access management

Having insecure identity and access management (IAM) is a common risk in cloud systems. At a high level, it occurs when users or services have access to resources they should not be able to access and/or do not need. Poor access management can lead to adversary exploitations like account hijacking. 

Account hijacking is a type of attack where threat actors attempt to steal sensitive credentials through the use of techniques like phishing, keylogging, brute-force attacks, and cross-site scripting (XSS). Attackers can also inject malicious software into cloud services to compromise data and operations.

To minimize this threat: 

• Enforce the principle of least privilege for all of your cloud resources and users; always avoid granting complete access to a resource if a service only needs read access or access to a subpart of the resource.

• Use third-party tools to scan and detect misconfiguration of IAM policies; a CNAPP can help increase the visibility of a misconfiguration.

• Frequently review access and privileges, as access requirements change over time.

• Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) across your organization to ensure that an additional layer of authentication is required to access systems (e.g., via a physical phone or email address).

• Enforce risk-based MFA for any employees granted cloud access to their accounts and data, balancing security and user experience.

#6: Malicious insiders

Malicious insiders, also known as insider threats, are cybersecurity risks that come from within the organization, usually in the form of a disgruntled or negligent employee. There are a few ways that these malicious insiders can gain access to your cloud accounts — for example, if a former employee still has valid credentials to the accounts, they will be able to gain access.

Malicious insiders can also access your cloud resources via account hijacking due to a successful phishing attack and/or weak credential security (e.g., if an employee has a password that is too simple or a password is shared between accounts). This kind of vulnerability can be particularly dangerous, as data is not the only thing at risk of being stolen or changed — intellectual property is at risk as well.

To minimize this threat:

• Make sure MFA is activated.

• Filter out phishing emails using an automated tool.

• Educate employees about phishing attacks.

• Make sure employees follow safe password practices.

#7: Zero-day vulnerabilities

A zero-day vulnerability is a security or software flaw for which no patch or fix is available. These types of vulnerabilities are therefore undetectable by many antivirus software solutions or other signature-based threat detection technologies. Once they have exploited the vulnerability, attackers might attempt to exfiltrate sensitive data, perform remote code execution, or block legitimate users from accessing their cloud services. 

To minimize this threat:

• Regularly deploy software updates to all endpoints.

• Prioritize patching efforts based on risk priority.

• Employ real-time attack blocking mechanisms based on behavior.

#8: Human error

According to the Thales Global Cloud Security Study, human action was responsible for 44% of cloud data breaches reported incidents. These errors can take many forms, including misconfigurations and access management issues. Many of these vulnerabilities are caused by limited knowledge about security best practices or poor strategic planning.

To minimize this threat:

• Train your DevOps team, sysadmins, and managers on cloud security best practices.  

• Train employees on how to spot a phishing email.

• Follow some basic principles to minimize the risk of public data storage misconfiguration.

• Maintain proper documentation on security processes and requirements.

• Evaluate the security posture of cloud service providers and understand the shared responsibility model. 

• Develop an incident response plan so everyone knows what their role is in case of an emergency.

• Stay aware of the most common vulnerabilities of all your native and third-party partner systems.

How CrowdStrike protects your cloud environment

Cloud vulnerabilities are increasingly common, and it’s extremely difficult for organizations to manage highly distributed and dynamic cloud environments. We discussed the most common cloud security threats, but there are many other vulnerabilities to address. As a cybersecurity leader recognized by multiple independent testing organizations and third-party analyst firms, CrowdStrike has taken a visionary approach to designing scalable and effective cloud security that provides multi-cloud visibility, security, and compliance in a single, unified platform. CrowdStrike Falcon® Cloud Security was built from the ground up as a fully integrated CNAPP offering, and it is simple to turn on, extending protection from customer endpoints to the cloud with agentless aFnd agent-based protection.