Navigating top 10 cybersecurity risks in cloud-native environments
report revealed that 82% of breaches involved data stored in the cloud. This is due to a lack of visibility across hybrid environments and a patchwork strategy to protect data as it moves across clouds, databases, apps, and services.
A host of cybersecurity challenges come with a cloud-first application architecture, and multiple cloud-native environments demand meticulous attention and proactive mitigation measures.
This article examines the top 10 cybersecurity risks inherent in cloud-native environments and offers effective strategies to safeguard against them.
1. Identity and Access Management Risks: In cloud-native architectures, managing users' and services' identities and access privileges becomes exponentially complex.
With increased application-to-application communication, the validation of access is not just crucial, it's also more intricate due to the proliferation of service identities.
Mitigation Strategy: Implement a robust identity and access management (IAM) framework encompassing multi-factor authentication (MFA), least privilege access, and regular permissions audits.
Utilise identity federation and service mesh architectures to ensure secure service-to-service authentication and authorisation.
2. Remote Access Risks: The very nature of cloud services means most access is remote, significantly elevating the risk of unauthorised access.
Traditional perimeter-based security models are inadequate in these scenarios, highlighting the importance of adopting a zero-trust security model.
Mitigation Strategy: Embrace a zero-trust security framework that requires all users, whether inside or outside the organisation's network, to be authenticated, authorised, and continuously validated before granting
