Cloud usage is on the rise for organizations globally. In the aftermath of the pandemic and with the renewed emphasis on remote work structures, this trend is likely to continue. According to a recent report by cybersecurity solutions provider Check Point Software Technologies, 35% of organizations have more than 50% of their workloads in the cloud. Among these organizations, nearly 29% have said that they are anticipating the move of nearly 3/4 of the workloads in the cloud within the next 12-18 months. However, as the usage of cloud continues to grow among organizations globally, so do the vulnerabilities associated with it. This 2022 global report of 775 cybersecurity professionals revealed that security incidents in the cloud are becoming more frequent with numbers up by as much as 10% from the previous year. 27% of the surveyed companies cited misconfigurations as the primary reason behind the steep increase. Cloud Services Vancouver provides a host of Cloud Security Solutions for local businesses.

The problem is further compounded by the fact that companies are continuing to struggle to integrate security as part of the DevOps cycle. DevSecOps continues to be more of an exciting theory than widely applied practice. Among the surveyed companies, only 16% reported having comprehensive DevSecOps in place with many only beginning their journey to integrate it in their cloud application development. Many companies are still deciding whether they should go for cloud native or a third-party security services provider. The deciding factor is of course the promise of reduced complexity, cited by as many as 56% of respondents as a decisive factor.

Even with the significant Cloud Security Benefits including enhanced flexibility, productivity, and reduced costs, cloud security is likely to remain a primary concern for organizations. In this article we will try and highlight some of the top trends in cloud computing in 2022 and beyond.Supply Chain Attacks seem to be the new hot trend among hackers and malicious actors. Cybercriminals love to exploit existing weak links in the infrastructure and the opportunity to enter malicious code into legitimate pieces of software and hardware developed by smaller vendors in the supply chain. Unfortunately, this kind of attacks are very effective at breaching security defenses and can breach cloud defenses to target a company’s most valuable and sensitive data.While cloud security providers excel at implementing the latest security strategies and tools to secure client data, they are vulnerable to advanced threats, especially when perpetrated by large nation state actors. Another factor that further weakens cloud security for companies is their hurried transition to the cloud at the start of the pandemic. This resulted in a lot of misconfiguration and gaps in the cloud security framework. Since companies are already anticipating cloud breaches this year, it pays to be prepared and respond quickly to breaches in order to contain the damage.Multi-cloud strategy is here to stay for the foreseeable future. Companies are looking for ways to seamlessly integrate the services provided by several cloud service providers and create fundamentally strong architectures along with the additional component of integrated edge computing. However, such structures, by their very nature, are quite complicated and can result in inconsistencies. This could very well lead to a widening of the attack surface available to hackers. In order to truly leverage a multi cloud strategy, companies also need to invest in a robust multi-cloud security strategy.The demand for pre-validation of configurations and architecture is on the rise along with the remarkable popularity of autonomous cloud-based environments. It is likely that we will see an increasing adoption of infrastructure-as-code (IAC) in 2022. This practice will help companies secure their code with third-party software and cloud-based technology before software production.“Zero trust” approach to security is gaining popularity. This approach limits access to all company data, unless verified. This approach implements the philosophy of least privilege access and even prevents people from within the company network to access data and resources that are not directly related to their work outcomes.  is one of the most important concepts you should know when protecting your cloud infrastructure. Significantly reducing access to various parts of the company’s information infrastructure limits the impact of attacks even in cases of a privacy breach. This approach is particularly suitable for cloud security. In order to implement this approach, companies need to effectively manage their network policies, data access, resource configuration, and identity access permissions.With the rising number of ransomware attacks, many companies have already implemented multi-factor authentication (MFA) and single sign-on (SSO). These tools are particularly helpful in preventing user credential misuse and abuse. However, as companies have improved security on the human side of the security chain, hackers have started to target machine and service identities. Hackers are abusing these identities in order to circumvent existing security protocols and illegally access company data and resources stored in the cloud. Unfortunately, machine and service identities are typically used to enact processes not covered in cybersecurity, and are quite vulnerable to Cloud Security Challenges. Cloud Security Best Practices indicate that companies need to be careful to ensure visibility into their systems. They should also implement tools such as automated digital certificate management to manage expired certificates, reduce downtimes and scope of human error. An updated inventory of all machine identities, keys, and certificates helps as well. Managed IT Services Vancouver provides local businesses with the most effective cloud security management solutions.