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CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF HACKING

What do Apple, Amazon and Microsoft have in common? 

The answer: All three technology giants, considered the gold standard among cloud computing providers, have suffered the ignominy of being breached by hackers.

Apple’s “celebgate” incident exposed personal photos of its celebrity iCloud users and made unwelcome news headlines last year. 

UK technology provider Code Spaces was forced out of business last year after hackers tried to blackmail it and subsequently deleted crucial data from its Amazon Web Services-hosted cloud storage. 

In 2013, an expired SSL certificate in Microsoft’s Azure cloud service gave hackers the chance to bring down the Xbox Live and a raft of other cloud-hosted services.

Cloud security risks are rising, with attacks growing at 45% year-on-year globally, according to cloud security firm Alert Logic. In the next five years, $2 billion will be spent by enterprises to shore up their cloud defenses, according to Forrester Research. 

First time cloud users can be most at risk, simply because of unfamiliarity with the new environment and the added burden of having to grapple with a new way of managing users, data and security.

Credit:Rajesh Maurya, Fortinet / Financial Express