Data Structure
Networking
RDBMS
Operating System
Java
MS Excel
iOS
HTML
CSS
Android
Python
C Programming
C++
C#
MongoDB
MySQL
Javascript
PHP
Physics
Chemistry
Biology
Mathematics
English
Economics
Psychology
Social Studies
Fashion Studies
Legal Studies
- Selected Reading
- UPSC IAS Exams Notes
- Developer's Best Practices
- Questions and Answers
- Effective Resume Writing
- HR Interview Questions
- Computer Glossary
- Who is Who
How has the Cloud opened new doors for Hackers?
A boom in the remote work culture has changed how businesses operate, leaving them prone to cyber threats. From individuals to highly scalable organizations, all are cloud dependents. Every business invests in various cloud infrastructures according to their needs because cloud computing offers multiple advantages like scalability, cost−effectiveness, data backup, security, etc. But the question arises as to what level of protection the cloud can guarantee. Is it that secure to update all our data to the cloud? Can hackers steal this data? Yes, Hackers can even make it into the cloud and ruin your privacy.
As more and more applications and tools are moving to the cloud, it's the case that many people demand access to these resources. A few also have the authority to unlock security authentication to explore the data. Hackers can take advantage of this scenario to search for potential holes. They either try to steal this information by getting credential details or convince information accessors to breach the data illegally for them.
Is the cloud a cause of data hacks?
From the beginning of the '20s, data and applications maintained in the cloud have been the primary targets for many hackers. In 2019, Wyze labs reported that the data of 2.4 million people from cameras was leaked. The company generally stores customer data in a cloud database. However, the company's employee mistakenly removed the shield, which led to a significant loss for the company in terms of money and reputation.
Research has shown that 53% of cloud accounts allowed weak passwords, while 44% of the account passwords are repetitive or the same as passwords of other sign−ups. These weak passwords don't require any optimized methods to crack them; a traditional attack can quickly figure out these. Binaryedge is a cyber security company that scans the internet to find threats and exposures. It said that nearly 35000 risky databases on the internet are found in the cloud of developed countries like America and China. It should not be surprising that these countries adopted cloud technology at their very core.
Major cloud service providers in the current market are amazon web services, google cloud platform and Microsoft Azure. These platforms have security features inbuilt to secure their service and infrastructure, but it's the user's responsibility to take care of the data and applications they deploy on cloud platforms.
How does the Cloud help Hackers reach your device?
Cloud being very popular in businesses, hackers wanted to find their use case in the same technology and succeeded to some extent. Yes, cloud technology can help them reach your device. They discovered ways to hack information by keeping the cloud as a medium. For instance, email is the largest platform that works on the cloud. A day of a human in 2022 starts with an email check. However, hackers have the most extensive scope to get their hands on your data and machine through emails. Anybody can crack the email IDs of users because many of them are similar in pattern. Hackers regularly send malicious links to tons of email addresses. If anybody clicks on that malicious link, a program that sends your data to hackers gets installed on your machine. When someone falls into this trap, hackers get the way open to steal other's data in the network of the hacked device along with compromised device data.
Email is a way that a hacker instigates you to take action that lands you in trouble. Despite that, there is another exciting way where you look for the problem on your own. Many companies, including reputed companies like Oracle, Microsoft, git−hub, etc., are providing their open−source services through the cloud when you go to some website that offers services on the cloud and downloads something you need from there. What if the service comes to your system along with a hacker's malicious code? As a result, your data gets compromised. Have you ever seen warnings from files downloaded from the internet mentioning that the file is not secure? This is the additional method to infect your data through cloud platforms.
Have you ever seen a warning from a hard drive or USB that there is an issue with the device and scanned it to fix it? Yes, a virus can sometimes enter the system if you install any data from the cloud to back up devices, and this provides the virus with transport to travel among multiple devices. So, it's always preferred to secure your data while interacting with cloud platforms.
Conclusion
Even if hardware installations on premises are more secure, the cloud has saturated our lives because of its numerous benefits. As cloud computing opened new doors for hackers to steal our data, there are a lot of alternatives to secure it from the hands of hackers. So, the cloud could benefit us more if we configure its security settings with cybersecurity technologies.
71 Views
