Page 148 - Cyber Defense eMagazine September 2022

• Adoption of remote working culture

Another major reason that emerged for surge in attacks on the cloud is rise in adoption of remote working.
Very few organizations adopted this culture before the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the outbreak of the
pandemic became the primary factor for a considerable rise in implementation of remote working or work
from home culture in organizations across the world. According to the survey by Gartner, nearly 88% of
the total organizations across the globe provided remote working option to cope up with the pandemic.
Organization have found that there are many benefits such as lowered operating cost and improved
productivity with remote working facility. CoSo Cloud survey highlighted that there was 77% increase in
productivity of employees with remote working. The trend of remote working persisted post-pandemic.
Nearly 16% of organization adopted fully-remote mode of operation, according to Owl Labs. Though this
number is less, it will increase considerably in the coming years. The cloud is the most feasible option for
ensuring the smooth operation in the remote working culture. This shows that the cloud adoption will
increase as more and more organizations adopt fully-remote culture. It will make the cloud platforms a
target for attacks as cyber-criminals will try to exploit vulnerabilities and pose different types of threats.

These major reasons will increase the need for cloud security. Various cloud security measures will be
implemented by organizations to strengthen the safety of data, ensure seamless operations, and improve
cost-efficiency. The demand for innovative and strict cloud security measures will increase in the coming
years. According to the report published by Allied Market Research, the global cloud security market is
estimated grow considerably in the next few years, owing to rise in demand for managed security services
and surge in dependence on cloud-based services.

Let us now look at major types of cyber-attacks on the cloud and how they can be prevented:

• Prevention of data breaches

Data breach is one of the major ways hackers are attacking the cloud. The huge data breach shook
LinkedIn in 2012. More than 100 million users were affected. Their usernames and passwords were
stolen and put on the internet black market for sale. Similarly, Yahoo reported that nearly 500 million
users were affected due to data breach in 2014. This is the result of improper access management and
the losses may be irreparable. The simple solution is to introduce multi-factor authentication. Social
media companies such as Facebook began this practice. Nearly every social media, banking, and other
organizations began implementation of two-factor authentication. Yahoo introduced Yahoo Account Key
that eliminated the requirement of password and surged the protection measures.
Organizations need to ensure that that they have a specific access management layout. This implies that
the marketing department in the organization does not have an access to the finance department
credentials and protocols. This layout will help in ensuring the proper management of access points.
Another way to avoid the data breach is to put firewall restrictions in place. This firewall will allow the
authorized personnel only and detect the suspicious activities. It is not necessary that the threats will be
made from outside sources only. The existing or former employees, partners, and contractors can utilize
their ability to carry out various activities such as data loss, data breaches, credential leakage, system
downtime, and others. Organizations need to provide access of critical systems to employees based on

Cyber Defense eMagazine – September 2022 Edition 148
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