While planning your cloud deployment, you want to be prepared for common threats such as malware and privilege-based attacks. There are too many common threats to enumerate here, so instead this article will provide a snapshot of high-profile threats that industry experts are thinking about right now.

• Insider threats include both workers within your own organization who have access to systems and data and also cloud service provider (CSP) administrators. When you subscribe to CSP services, you are essentially entrusting your data and workloads to the multitude of staff who are responsible for maintaining the CSP architecture. Another consideration is whether data is accessible to governmental entities. Security experts are paying more attention to the laws, regulations, and real-life practices that demonstrate whether a government can use court orders or other means to gain access to data in a private or public cloud.
• DoS attacks are a huge area of focus. Temporary direct denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks typically involve hammering a system with requests until it shuts down. Security perimeters can deflect these attacks using network compliance policies to filter out repeated requests. CSPs can also shift workloads and traffic to other resources while they work to restore the system. Permanent DoS attacks are more destructive and often inflict damage at the firmware level to render a server unbootable. In this case, a technician needs to physically reload the firmware and rebuild the system from scratch, which can result in servers being shut down for days or weeks.
• The cloud edge can refer to cloud-connected edge systems, but for a CSP it also refers to server architecture that is not under the CSP’s direct control. Global CSPs cannot build and run their own facilities in every corner of the planet, so they rely on partners to deliver services to smaller, geographically isolated, or rural regions. As a result, these CSPs don’t have total control to monitor and ensure physical box integrity for the hardware or physical attack protections such as locking down access to USB ports.
• Customer control influences how customers evaluate public cloud offerings. From the customer perspective, users are nervous about moving sensitive workloads to the public cloud. On the other hand, big cloud providers are typically much better equipped and have a much higher level of expertise in cloud security than the average enterprise running a private cloud. Generally, customers find it reassuring to be in total control of their most sensitive data, even if their security tools aren’t as sophisticated.
• Hardware limitations mean that even with the most robust cloud security architecture in the world, a server can’t help you create a better password. Passwords are one of the most common vectors of attack. Cloud security architects are focused on hardware, firmware, and software protections, but it will still fall on the shoulders of everyday users to follow best practices.