Insider Threat in the Cloud

By Jasmine Chennikara-Varghese

As applications and the sensitive data they contain migrate to the cloud, the risks linked to insider threat persist. Cloud services empower end users to be more mobile, flexible and productive while also simplifying IT management and improving cost-efficiency. However, the cloud also expands the attack surfaces, enabling exploits and exposing vulnerabilities for credential compromise and unauthorized access to key applications.

Threat actors, whether internal or external, now have more avenues to hide in plain sight and perform malicious activities. This presents new challenges for organizations that must protect their business-critical applications no matter where they reside.

Moving applications to the cloud does not make them inherently more secure. Operating in the cloud actually exposes organizations to a new dimension of insider threat problems. Users within the organization will need to access and use the cloud applications in a manner similar to what they did when the applications were hosted on-premise.

In addition, a new set of users, those from the cloud service provider, will have administrative privileges to the cloud application and can potentially access business-critical data. Cloud services enable collaboration at a global level, but that same flexibility can be used to intentionally or unintentionally misuse and expose business-critical data.

Insider risks are amplified due to the lack of maturity of audit, governance and security controls for cloud applications. Previously, user endpoint devices and business applications were under IT’s domain with full oversight.

With cloud, employees, vendors and contractors are now more likely to connect their personal, unmanaged devices to business applications. In turn, IT and security teams have little or no insight on user activities in cloud applications.  As a result, it becomes more important than ever to have visibility into account creations, authorization changes, application modifications and transaction executions to detect malicious or fraudulent activities, manage auditing and satisfy compliance.

Learn how Pathlock can clear the way for visibility into your cloud applications so you can protect your critical business data everywhere.

[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column_inner][/et_pb_row_inner][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_4″][et_pb_sidebar orientation=”right” background_layout=”light” show_border=”on” /][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_section]