5 Major Cloud Security Threats and Proven Solutions

As organizations increasingly migrate to cloud computing, cybersecurity challenges have become more complex. From misconfiguration risks to API vulnerabilities, businesses—especially SMBs—must adopt proactive defense strategies to secure sensitive data. This article highlights the five biggest cloud security threats in 2025 and industry-backed solutions to fortify your infrastructure against evolving cyber risks.

Myth: “My data is on a secure cloud and that keeps me protected”
Fact: “The cost of a Data Breach globally is $3.86 million and in case of US alone it is $7.9 million”

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)

IaaS typically includes VMs (Virtual Machines) offering cloud compute, online storage solutions, Virtual Networks etc. Using Cloud infra definitely has its convenience of use with ease of access and availability of resources but it is also one of the major challenges when it comes to securing cloud based assets and services.

Myth: “But Data Security of the cloud falls on the service provider’s shoulders, why should I worry about it?”

Fact: “While the cloud service providers do provide security it is most likely only for their infrastructure and shared components within the environment and any individual or organization using its resources is responsible for their own cloud usage and data safety. So essentially cloud security is a shared responsibility between the service provider and the  end user”

If this piqued your interest, you should definitely read on further to understand what are the 5 major cloud security challenges that organizations face today and what can you do to mitigate the risks posed by these threats.

Threat: Misconfigured Security of Cloud based assets & services

Cloud misconfiguration remains a top cybersecurity threat, often leading to data leaks, unauthorized access, and compliance violations. Whether through weak permissions, unprotected databases, or neglected security settings, misconfigured assets serve as an open door for cybercriminals. In fact, misconfiguration-related breaches account for over 60% of cloud security incidents globally.

Threat: Denial of Services (DoS) attack

This is one of the most common attacks by a group of hackers (sometimes state sponsored) where they just fill the cloud environment with a flood of empty requests thereby overwhelming the shared infra resources which ultimately renders the services unavailable to legitimate users.

Threat: Escaping VM to gain access of Operating System

Sometimes these malicious actors escape the virtual environment to gain access to the operating system where they start launching and controlling their own cloud instances giving them the ability to launch DDoS attacks on other cloud accounts. This in turn has severe legal and monetary implications for the victim since the attacks are launched from within their virtual environment.

Threat: Multiple attack touch points

This vulnerability is of particular concern where the security team/organization has no control over the wide number of devices that are being used to access secure data in the cloud exposing multiple entry points for threat actors. What this typically means is: employees can access and use cloud services and data through their laptop, mobile phones, tablets and so on. We are leading connected lives across different devices that may or may not be running unauthorized third party software that can expose confidential data and eventually causes legal and monetary losses to the organization.

Threat: Huge amounts of Insecure and Vulnerable APIs

APIs are handling huge data from the cloud to the client’s devices, if they are left unpatched and unprotected they expose a significantly large attack surface for malicious actors. These hackers can hook into these APIs and gain access to confidential personal information that can be exploited in multiple ways from identity theft to monetary frauds - potential implications are both dire and endless.

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Cybersecurity Awareness 2025: How SMBs Can Stay Ahead of Evolving Threats

In an increasingly hybrid workplace it has almost become our second nature to deploy and use cloud based resources, data and services to enable seamless collaboration between different teams and departments, here are a few proven strategies that will help you to ward off these threats and keep your business operation secure:

Secure Identity & Access Management:

Robust Identity & Access Management (IAM) ensures that only verified, role-based users can interact with cloud resources, minimizing unauthorized access risks. Implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA), least privilege principles, and continuous identity monitoring can significantly reduce credential-related breaches—one of the most exploited attack vectors in cloud security.

Encrypting data on the cloud:

This is usually one of the most underrated defense mechanisms that can be deployed right away and completely free of charge or at a very low cost. This provides an effective first line of defense against potential data breach and loss of personal information.

Periodic patching and updating your systems:

We at RITC cybersecurity cannot stress this enough, latest patches to software always contain updated code for better security and reliability against ever evolving attack methods employed by threat actors across different control surfaces and entry points. 

Implementing Cloud Security Posture Management Solution: 

CSPM basically automates the process of identifying cloud misconfigurations, and through tracking online behavior of various entities associated with the cloud it can proactively detect any threat that might turn into a full blown cyberattack on the resources of the organization.

The future of cloud security depends on proactive protection, strategic risk mitigation, and continuous monitoring. Whether you're a CISO managing enterprise security or an SMB owner navigating cloud adoption, implementing best practices like CSPM, encryption, and identity security is essential to safeguarding your digital assets. Audit your cloud security posture today to stay ahead of emerging threats.

When it comes to businesses a cookie-cutter approach seldom works. If you’d like to know specific strategies that are more pertinent to your business operations schedule a free consultation with us today here: contact us

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