MSE805 Cloud Security Assessment

Introduction

As, everyone knows, technology is changing every single day and everyday people get to see new technologies. It is very difficult for the individuals to keep the data save in old technology as there are different ways to provide theft the sensitive and confidential data. Cloud computing is the main way through which data can be secured and it also provide scalable as well as adaptable solutions so that business can work effectively and efficiently. It is affordable as well as easy to use and depends on the company to company or business to businesses. It also helps in providing different services to the world wide companies. It also helps companies or businesses in order to handle the large amount of data without the tension of space.

The another term that this assessment will be using is IAM. It helps in managing the user permission to services as well as it confirms their legitimacy. Ineffective IAM procedures might provide threat to the security and compliance by allowing someone unintentionally to break down the unwanted access along with information breaches. This study will explore more advancedsecurity solutions, real-time monitoring devices, as well as the other threats to different kinds of data and attacks that cloud environments confront. This assessment will also offer practical security suggestions to improve the safeguarding of information and credentials on the public internet. Organizations may improve the security of their cloud computing platforms against emerging threats by comprehending and tackling these crucial areas (Albugmi et al., 2016).

Task 1

1.1.Challenges and importance of data integrity in cloud security

Data integrity helps and it also guarantees the legitimacy, correctness, consistency, as well as thoroughness of the data to almost all the businesses. Organizations that adhere to the procedure guarantee both the accuracy and correctness of the information held in their database as well as the DI (Ali et al., 2015).
Data Integrity becomes more crucial as long as the amounts of data keep growing exponentially. To forecast customer behaviour, evaluate market activity, and reduce possible data security threats, major businesses are depending progressively more on the integration of data and correct information interpretation. For data professionals to work using the correct knowledge, this is essential to data mining.

Data security Challenges (Brohi et al., 2019)

Importance of data integrity

Maintaining the data integrity via procedures like these is essential to preventing the dangers and problems listed above.

Verify the input: To guarantee correctness, data entry needs to be reviewed and confirmed. Whenever data comes from both known and unidentified sources such as programs, end users, and malevolent users validating input is crucial.

Eliminate redundant information: Ensuring that confidential information kept in confidential databases can't be copied into documents, email messages, folders, as well as spreadsheets that are accessible to the general public is crucial. Eliminating redundant data can aid in preventing unwanted possession of personally identifiable information (PII) as well as company-sensitive information.

Backup information: Data integrity and confidentiality depend heavily on data backups. Doing regular data backups can help keep important information from being lost forever. Because data backups allow firms to restore recent copies of their database including papers, and they are particularly essential for those who experience ransomware attacks.

Controls over access: Upholding data integrity also requires the application of suitable access controls. This depends on using a least-privileged strategy for data access, that guarantees that individuals can only access the information, files, and folders, including servers which they require to perform their jobs well. This stops illegal access to data and lessens the likelihood that hackers will be able to pass for real users.

Maintain an audit trail at all times: Companies must be able to identify the origin of an event immediately upon discovery of a breach. Companies can follow the events and procedures of a breach with the help of an audit log, which subsequently helps them identify the attack's origin.

Challenges of Data Integrity

1.Data Breaches and Leaks: There are various Cloud environments available that are the prime targets for cyberattacks. Data breaching can also help in compromising the integrity of sensitive data or information, it leads to unauthorized access as well as data manipulation.

2.Human Error: Misconfigurations as well as errors provide by cloud service providers or other users can also result in data corruption as well as in data loss, which also compromises data integrity.

3.Insider Threats: Employees who are having malicious intent of the employees or the other employees who are inadvertently compromising the security protocols can also help in altering or destroying the critical data.

4.Complexity of Cloud Environments: The dynamic as well as distributed nature of cloud environments also help in making it more challenging to preserve the consistent data integrity across multiple platforms as well as different services (Hashizume et al., 2013).

5.Compliance and Legal Issues: Making sure of data integrity is critical for compliance with regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, and others, it also helps in mandating stringent data protection features as well as measures.

Importance of Data Integrity

1.Trust and Reliability: Making sure data integrity fosters trust and reliability among users as well as other stakeholders, as they can be confident that the data they are accessing is accurate along unaltered.

2.Decision-Making: most of organizations rely on accurate data for making decisions. If the data is compromised data, then this data can lead to flawed analyses and businesses can make poor business decisions.

3.Compliance and Legal Obligations: Maintaining data integrity is crucial for compliance with various regulatory requirements, which helps avoid legal penalties and reputational damage.

4.Operational Efficiency: Consistent as well as accurate data helps in making sure of smooth and operational processes, which also helps in reducing the risk of disruptions that are caused because of data corruption or loss (Brohi et al., 2019).

How data integrity helps in e-commerce?

ECommerce companies that wish to base their decisions on trustworthy information must ensure data integrity. But talked about, there are special difficulties in keeping integrity, especially when working with the large amounts of data collected from many sources. Creating a personalized system for organizing data can give larger eCommerce firms with the means a great deal of control and personalization.

The following steps are very essential and they involved in the process:

1. Extracting the data: This process means to extract the data and takes out the data from multiple sources, like consumer databases, advertising methods, that also involves e-commerce platforms. It is important to fetch the data effectively so that the team who will be preparing the report can generate the effective KPIs.

2. Evaluation after preparing the data: After extracting the data, now it is time to clean the data, all missing values should be filled, all spaces should be remove before moving on to the next step which is analysis of data.

3. Data analysis: It is important to analyse the data as per the ecommerce business so that it can help in taking the decision on the basis of the analyses.

4. Data visualization as well as reporting: Lastly after preparing the reports, these reports needs to be present in front of the marketing team so that they can take decision.
It takes an important investment to assemble a committed group of experts with a variety of skill sets in order to build a strong internal information administration system. They include individuals such as data analysts and researchers for data preparing, developing models, along with analysis, data designers for cloud infrastructure, developing, security, and collection governance, along with a project management team to convert findings into workable plans.

1.2.Evaluation of Different IAM Solutions

1.Single Sign-On (SSO): SSO solutions help streamline user authentication by allowing users to they can access multiple applications by using only one-time login credentials, it also helps in enhancing security as well as user convenience.

2.Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): MFA helps add an extra layer of security by requiring users to provide various forms of verification (which include passwords, fingerprints, and OTP) before accessing resources (Dastjerdi & Buyya, 2016).

3.Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): RBAC helps in restricting access based on the users role within the organization, it also helps in making sure that users only have access to the information necessary for their job functions.

4.Identity Federation: Identity federation helps in allowing the users to use their existing credentials from one domain (such as a business directory) to access other resources in another domain (like cloud services).

5.User Provisioning and De-provisioning: It also helps in automating the processes for creating as well as removing the user accounts to make sure that access rights are promptly updated, also helps in reducing the risk of unauthorized access.

6.Privileged Access Management (PAM): PAM solutions help in managing and monitoring the activities of privileged users (such as administrators) to prevent misuse of elevated access rights (Chen & Zhao, 2012).

To protect their data, businesses use a variety of cloud security options today. Collectively, each of these possibilities can be utilized to create a comprehensive and successful cloud security plan. User identification and access to assets are managed via IAM. To avoid unwanted access, it guarantees appropriate authorization, login, and user management and offers fine-grained control over who may access particular cloud services along with what individuals can do. Network and gadget safety guarantees correct configuration and strengthens cloud infrastructure as well as devices versus network-level threats. Such cloud security system helps defend against malware, DDoS assaults, and various other external dangers. It consists of firewalls, IDPs, including VPNs (Mohammed & Khan, 2016). Securing endpoints utilized to access cloud services can also be aided by smartphone administration and safeguarding endpoints.

Security features

Four main forms of safety for cloud system management are offered by CASB services:

Observability: This is a comprehensive overview of the cloud service environment for a company, complete with information on how users can access data in cloud-based services from every device, anywhere.

Information Security: To prevent unwanted activities, several CASBs offer the option to apply data security regulations. Data loss prevention (DLP) controls, which include audit, vigilant, block, confinement, delete, as well as view merely, are used to enforce policies.

Defence Against Threats: Adaptive access controls (CASBs) are used to stop unauthorized persons, gadgets, and software versions from using cloud services. It is possible to modify cloud access by applications according to signals seen both while and following login.
Observance: CASBs assist companies in proving that they control how services in the cloud are used. CASBs support attempts to comply with regulations on compliance with regulations and data sovereignty.

IAM (Chen & Zhao, 2012)

Task 2: Cloud security Risks and Threats

Identification and Discussion of cloud security risks and threats

New safety and regulatory issues have been introduced by cloud computing, which is used to broadly encompass the shift to the cloud and a mobile workforce. For security personnel, the use of unauthorized cloud apps, data oversharing, including cloud hijacking of accounts are major obstacles. For this reason, controlling and obtaining visibility into programs that the IT has allowed is essential to cloud protection. There are various and different platforms that many businesses wish to protect (Takabi et al., 2010).

1.Data breaches

A data breach occurs when any individual gain access to other authorised access in a non- authorised way. It can be happened because of the week password and other data security issues.

Impacts:

• Sensitive and confidential information can be lost of because of data breach

• Customer trust can be lost or any other potential damage can be done.

• Financial losses can be done because of the data loss and legal penalties can be applicable to the companies as they need to pay to the compensation to the consumers.

Mitigation strategies:

• It is important to have all the data in the encrypted form both data, transit data and at rest data.

• It is important to implement strong identity as well as access management procedures to restrict the access data.

2.Insider threats

Employees who are having malicious intent can also exploit their access to cloud resources and they can also steal or they can also alter the data, which provides a major threat to data integrity and security.

Impacts:

Insider threat can lead to threat the sensitive information or any other intellectual property.

Insiders threat can also cause disturbance in business operations because the can delete the important and required data or they can corrupt the data.

Mitigation Strategy

Security employs a blend of both technological and procedural protocols to safeguard data, apps, and cloud-based infrastructure against enduring cyber threats. Fundamentally, cloud security guarantees data privacy safeguarding, controlled access over services as well as data, as well as user and equipment authentication. By disclosing which cloud computing systems and services their consumers utilize, cloud security assists enterprises in safeguarding their users against risks originating from the Internet of Things.

• Keeping an eye on cloud computing operations to spot user mishaps and cyberattacks that can accidentally endanger the company.

• Preventing unlicensed individuals and cybercriminals from gaining access to private information and resources.

• Preventing account takeovers for cloud-based customers.

• Upholding security as well as regulatory guidelines.

3.DDOS Attacks

DoS attacks can also help in disrupting the cloud services, render them unavailable to authorised users and it also causes operational disruptions.

Mitigation Strategy:

Cloud security uses a data-centric strategy, which includes permission procedures, encryption of data, as well as authentication using multiple factors, to avoid unauthorized use, in contrast to conventional cybersecurity approaches that concentrate on perimeter along with network security. Cloud security, which is a component of the CIA triad of security paradigm, functions in all three major cloud circumstances: public, private, as well as hybrid cloud solutions. It does this by preserving the confidentiality, integrity, and accessibility of information. The kind of person or company utilizing security for the cloud, the purpose of their enterprise, and their data requirements will determine the best environment (Subashini & Kavitha, 2021).

Real world example

A fresh DoS attack with unprecedented levels was carried out in December2023. The HTTP/2 Rapid Reset Layer attack technique was a novel way to target servers that could elude more established DoS defence strategies like rate limitation or simple blacklists. This served as a reminder that DoS defence needs to keep evolving and that more complete protection is needed in order for DoS suppliers to properly fend off sophisticated, current DoS attacks.

Cloud security (Subashini & Kavitha, 2021)

2.1. Common Cloud Security Risks and Threats

Cloud security risk means the possible threats and issues which can be exploited and it leads to a compromise environment within the cloud. Such risks can arise because of different concerns and sources, which includes technical issues, vulnerabilities, inadequate policies as well as misconfigurations.

1.Data Breaches: Unauthorized access to any sensitive information helps in storing in the cloud and that can lead to data breaches, which also result in financial losses as well as reputational damage.

2.Insufficient Identity, Credential, and Access Management: if there are weak IAM practices that are being followed then it can result in unauthorized access to cloud resources and making them enabling attackers so that they can exploit the vulnerabilities.

3.Insecure Interfaces and APIs: Cloud services often rely on APIs, which, if not properly secured, can be exploited to gain unauthorized access or manipulate data.

4.Account Hijacking: Attackers can also hijack cloud accounts with the help of phishing, credential stuffing, as well as other means, gaining unauthorized access to any kind of sensitive data as well as resources.

5.Misconfiguration and Inadequate Change Control: Misconfigurations in cloud settings can also help in exposing the data to unauthorized access, on the other hand, if there are insufficient change control processes which can lead to vulnerabilities.

6.Insiders threat: Employees who are having malicious intent can also exploit their access to cloud resources and they can also steal or they can also alter the data, which provides a major threat to data integrity and security.

Emerging Threats

1.Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs): APTs are involved in various prolonged as well as targeted attacks, which often lead to sophisticated adversaries, that aim to infiltrate as well as infiltrate data from any kind of cloud environment.

2.Ransomware: Ransomware attacks also cause encrypting the cloud data, and they also demand payment for the decryption keys. These kinds of attacks can cause significant disruptions as well as data loss.

3.Shadow IT: If the services from the cloud are unauthorized and are being used by employees without IT department approval then it can also create security vulnerabilities as well as issues related to data integrity.

4.Container and Micro Services Vulnerabilities: As different organizations adopt containerized applications as well as micro-services, vulnerabilities in such environments can be exploited to compromise security.

2.2. Security Solutions
Security solutions means to the different technologies, procedures as well as practices designed to secure data, system, networks as well as data because of cyber vulnerabilities as well as threats. Such solutions aim in order to prevent unauthorized access, misusing any data, disclosure, disruption, modification, as well as destruction of the confidential data.

Data breaches

Security solutions

Data Encryption

1.At-Rest Encryption: Encrypting the data which is stored inside the cloud makes sure that even if unauthorized access occurs, this data will not be readable and will now any other user to access it, it means it is on rent while encryption.

2.In-Transit Encryption: Encrypting data while transmitting helps protect it from interception as well as tampering, making sure that the data is integrity as well as confidentiality (Kang & Kang, 2017).

3.End-to-End Encryption: Implementing any kind of end-to-end encryption makes sure that the data is encrypted from the point of origin to the target point which provides comprehensive protection.

Access control

1.IAM: Helps in monitoring and analysing the network traffic for signs of different kinds of malicious activity, blocking different kinds of potential threats before they can infiltrate into the cloud environment.

2.MFA: Monitoring the individual cloud servers for different kinds of suspicious activities, helps in providing an additional layer of security on the other level which is the host level.

Regular Security

1.Antivirus and Anti-Malware: It helps in protecting the cloud endpoints from malware infections, and also helps in preventing potential data breaches as well as integrity issues.

2.Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR): Also helps in providing advanced monitoring as well as analysing the endpoint activities so that it can detect as well as respond to different security incidents (Kaaniche, Laurent & Mahdy, 2017).

Access Control

1.Least Privilege Principle: Making sure that the individuals have the minimum access necessary so that they can perform their tasks, and they can also reduce the risk of any kind of unauthorized access.

2.Zero Trust Architecture: It also makes an assumption based on the device of the users by default, it also requires various kinds of continuous verification for accessing to cloud resources.

Insider threat

Security solution:

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

1.Log Management: Collecting and analysing logs from various cloud resources helps identify and respond to security incidents in real time.

2.Threat Intelligence: Integrating these kinds of threats into the intelligence feeds with SIEM systems helps enhance the capability so that it can detect and also can respond to some emerging threats.

Employee training and Awareness

Train the employees regularly so that they can protect the secure data and implement best practices in order to save the data.

Communication

Businesses communicate data and files with collaborators and business partners using cloud computing including remote collaboration or communication solutions. Simultaneously, they may jeopardize intellectual property (IP) and government-regulated data, including trade secrets, industrial designs, and additional confidential company information.

Response plan

Cybersecurity is a must for cloud computing systems. One area of cybersecurity specifically focused on this problem is cloud security. Cloud security is crucial for safeguarding data, however it also gives companies and professions an edge over their competitors in an increasingly cloud-dependent environment, helps them maintain continuity of operations in instances of disruptive events, protects their reputation, and helps them comply with regulatory requirements (Ruan et al., 2021).

DDOS Attacks

Security solutions

Protection services

A strong cloud security plan comprises several essential components. A strong user security solution that uses role-based control of access as well as multi-factor authentication (MFA) to thwart unwanted access. Clearly defined internal communication, managing changes, along information processing procedures were implemented within the public cloud service company's company.

Solutions, monitoring and alerts

Solutions for extremely secure safeguarding of the cloud that take advantage of network connections, infrastructure for storage, processing power, and specialized encryption keys. API security involves tracking, configuring, and keeping an eye on the attack surface that APIs give.

Redundancy and load balancing

Redundancy, as well as disaster recovery, plans to guarantee business continuation in case of calamity or security compromise. Frameworks for risk assessment that combine recurrent analysis of vulnerabilities with both passive and active security policy optimizations.

Confidentiality and integrity

Cloud-integrated cybersecurity products, comprising well-defined concepts, methods, and structures that avert security flaws before they arise. Retaining Confidentiality, Integrity, as well asAccessibility (CIA), and other essential components are key to building a robust cloud security architecture that thwarts cyberattack and utilizes targeted effort whenever and wherever it's required.

2.3. Role of real-time monitoring tools and technologies

Real-time monitoring tools and technologies helps in playing the important role in order to maintain the security, performance, as well as reliability of IT systems along with the networks. Such tools are continuously observe and also helps in analysing the information from different sources so that it can detect as well as respond to all the issues promptly.

1.Data-in-use:

Description

It helps in providing detailed logging as well as monitoring of AWS account activities, helps to identify along with sharing the response to any kind of security incidents.

Benefits

It helps in identifying very quickly all the abnormal activities or any kind of possible threat.
It also helps in facilitating the swift action in order to isolate and help in mitigating the threats prior to any cause of remarkable damage.

2.Data-in-transit:

Description
It also helps in offering unified security management as well as an advanced threat protection all over the Azure cloud services. This is very good for security management and also helps in monitoring all kinds of cloud services.

Benefits

It helps in making sure that data remains very secure while the data is in transit and it also helps in protecting from tampering as well as hampering.
It also helps in identifying the threats prior they can lead to data theft.

3.Data-at-rest:

Description

Helps in monitoring as well as assessing the security posture of Google Cloud resources, and also helps in providing real-time threat detection. Real-time threat detection is really important as it is very helpful in providing security and safety (Hu, Ferraiolo, & Kuhn, 2015).

Benefits

1.It is a very powerful SIEM tool that helps in collecting, analysing and visualising the data by taking the data from different cloud sources to identify and respond to different security incidents.

2.It also helps in providing a comprehensive view of monitoring and analysing cloud applications and their infrastructure, and also takes real-time threat detections as well as responses.

Real world example

In the financial institution's back workplace, real-time monitoring of systems is used to manage and distribute assets. Real-time monitoring is integrated into systems for managing client relationships by banks. The bank monitors every single transaction and procedures linked to compliance using a real-time technology.

2.4. Recommendations for enhancing companys cloud network

It helps in enhancing the business cloud network which involves different strategies that help in focusing on enhancing the security, performance, scalability, as well as the management. These help in providing the continuous visibility into the system performance as well as the security, also helps in enabling the organizations to proactively address issues as well as optimize the operations.

1.Data In-Use: Deploying EDR tools that are continuously monitoring the activities of endpoints and responding to the real time threats. User behaviour analytics is also helpful in detecting and responding the deviations. This helps in enforcing robust authentication as well as authorization mechanisms, which include the MFA and RBAC, to control access to any kind of cloud resources.

Essential Monitoring Requirements

• Using strong encryption is required while transmitting the data.

• Make sure that all APIs are employed for transferring the data.

2.Data In-Transit: it is important to implement the tools that are helpful for monitoring and analysing network traffic. This helps in making sure that every sensitive data is encrypted both at rest as well as in transit to protect it from unauthorized access as well as tampering. It also helps in conducting comprehensive security audits to identify as well as address potential weaknesses in cloud environments.

Essential Monitoring Requirements

• It is required to analyse the traffic continuously so that it can investigate the suspicious activities if there are any.

• Deploying IDPS(intrusion Detection and Prevention System) is required so that it can help in monitoring.

3.Data at rest: Conducting regular auditing that helps in making sure about the compliance with data privacy and protection, also its standards. It also helps in keeping the cloud infrastructure as well as applications up to date with the latest security patches it helps in mitigating the vulnerabilities. It is very important to educate the employees regarding security best practices as well as the importance of following security protocols to prevent human errors as well as insider threats (Hashizume et al., 2013).

Essential Monitoring Requirements

• It helps in monitoring the files continuously so that it can track unauthorised changes.

• Data loss prevention solution needs to monitor and also helps in controlling the movement of sensitive data as well as data exfiltration.

Conclusion

Cloud computing is the main way through which data can be secured and it also provide scalable as well as adaptable solutions so that business can work effectively and efficiently. It is affordable as well as easy to use and depends on the company to company or business to businesses. It also helps in providing different services to the world wide companies. It also helps companies or businesses in order to handle the large amount of data without the tension of space.

The another term that this assessment used was IAM. It helps in managing the user permission to services as well as it confirms their legitimacy. Ineffective IAM procedures might provide threat to the security and compliance by allowing someone unintentionally to break down the unwanted access along with information breaches. This study explored more advancedsecurity solutions, real-time monitoring devices, as well as the other threats to different kinds of data and attacks that cloud environments confront. This assessment offered practical security suggestions to improve the safeguarding of information and credentials on the public internet. Organizations may improve the security of their cloud computing platforms against emerging threats by comprehending and tackling these crucial areas

Are you struggling to keep up with the demands of your academic journey? Don't worry, we've got your back!
Exam Question Bank is your trusted partner in achieving academic excellence for all kind of technical and non-technical subjects. Our comprehensive range of academic services is designed to cater to students at every level. Whether you're a high school student, a college undergraduate, or pursuing advanced studies, we have the expertise and resources to support you.

To connect with expert and ask your query click here Exam Question Bank