The pandemic has created not just one, but many new normal. For people, for business, and also for cybersecurity operations.

One of the transformations concerns the storage and use of data. Enterprises are migrating quickly to the cloud, with an eye on the agility and scalability of this environment. But often this migration occurs without an updated risk matrix.

Cloud systems are not more secure just because they are in the cloud. In fact, the opposite is true. The risk is higher because a huge amount of valuable, confidential data is now stored in a technology that many companies still don't fully understand.

Cybercriminals follow this movement and adapt.

Attacks have exploded during the pandemic, with hackers taking advantage of the loopholes that organisations leave while figuring out best practices around cloud security and incident response.

Data theft is the primary goal of attackers. The types of information stolen can vary, but the most common targets are personal and financial data, such as credit card numbers. In cloud environments, the amount of information available can be much greater, making the potential impact of a breach more damaging to the business.

And the worst security flaws, in most cases, were created by the administrators of these environments themselves, through configuration errors that they end up committing out of ignorance of the new platform.

So when executing a cloud security strategy, some recommendations are important:

Have the right tools 

Cloud assets should always be included in cybersecurity incident response plans. Perform cloud event response testing at a tactical level to make sure the tools you are working with are the right ones.

Automate incident response

Implement security automation in cloud environments to improve your detection and response capabilities. This has the potential to significantly speed response and reduce damage.

In cybersecurity incidents, the longer the time between the attack and the start of the response, the worse.

Use threat intelligence

Threat actors are constantly evolving and enhancing strategies, techniques, and procedures with new capabilities targeted at cloud environments. Threat intelligence is nothing more than capturing this evolution to enable you to develop more effective defense strategies, protecting your operation against previously unknown attacks.

By: Leonardo Camata