Cloud computing has completely transformed how businesses operate — enabling agility, scalability, and innovation at a pace never before seen. In fact, according to Gartner, “Worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is forecast to total $723.4 billion in 2025, up from $595.7 billion in 2024… and 90 percent of organizations will adopt hybrid cloud through 2027.”
This rapid adoption is exciting, especially if you’re looking to future-proof your company’s IT infrastructure. However, this boom has created a host of new cloud security issues that organizations must navigate to protect their data, applications, and people.
In other words, while you may be embracing the cloud, cybercriminals are as well — and they’re leveraging its complexity and distributed nature to exploit vulnerabilities. So, how do we keep moving forward with the cloud safely? In this post, we’ll cover the risks and challenges in the cloud — and what you can do to mitigate security threats.
What are the security issues with cloud computing?
In IT, issues and problems can carry a different meaning. When talking about cloud security issues here, we are referring to vulnerabilities, threats, and weaknesses that can compromise the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of data and services hosted in the cloud. These issues can stem from both technical flaws — such as misconfigured storage buckets — and human factors like poor password practices.
The cloud brings a level of flexibility — and complexity — that may be tough to navigate at first. For example, for the first time, your team may be undertaking shared responsibility models, decentralized data flows, and multiple access points. That’s why understanding cloud security risks and challenges is essential for any IT team — especially those managing hybrid or multi-cloud environments.
One of the biggest cloud computing concerns stems from the fact that threat actors are continually looking for a way in. They may be looking for vulnerabilities in your cloud providers, or maybe they’re looking to get into your network and take advantage of lateral movement. In any case, with a hybrid or cloud environment, your job of monitoring the various avenues threat actors can take grows more complex by the day. Add to that a hybrid or remote workforce, and you’re looking at a host of challenges that your predecessors never had to face. (No shade to anyone working in IT for the long haul; you’ve likely witnessed the changes, too!)
Common challenges in cloud security
Organizations of all sizes face several challenges in cloud security, from technical to organizational. Here are some of the most common, along with ways to start tackling them:
1. Lack of cloud security strategy and skills
Many organizations adopt cloud services without a dedicated security roadmap. The problem is, a piecemeal approach to security and cloud setup leaves your team in a reactive state, playing a game of “whack-a-mole” with threats rather than proactively defending against them. Upskilling staff and working with trusted partners can help bridge this gap, but that may not be enough. Encouraging mentorships and ongoing education may be an impactful option for your team.
2. Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Without strict IAM controls, unauthorized users may access sensitive cloud resources. Implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA), role-based access, and regular audits helps prevent these risks. If you zoom out on your strategy a bit, these are all included in the tenets of Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA). Having a Zero Trust VPN can help you keep these elements in place without adding a ton to your team’s workload.
3. Shadow IT
Even the best employees sometimes use unsanctioned tools or cloud apps that IT isn’t aware of. Even if you don’t want to admit it, shadow IT can be a major issue. What’s the big deal if Sharon in Accounting wants to use some AI generator to create invoices without telling IT, or if Joe in Marketing uses an app that nobody really monitors to store some campaign information? Seems harmless, right?
Unfortunately, shadow IT can lead to visibility gaps and non-compliance, and that can put employee and customer data at risk — especially in a cloud or SaaS application-heavy environment.
Educating users and enforcing acceptable-use policies are crucial first steps, but you may need to take things a step further. Here are three suggestions:
- Cloud security monitoring.
- Monitoring and blocking access to potentially harmful sites.
- Enabling secure DNS content filtering.
4. Cloud compliance
Maintaining compliance with industry standards (like GDPR, HIPAA, or SOC 2) across cloud platforms is complex. Not only does your organization need to meet strict regulations, but the cloud provider must do the same. Organizations must monitor configurations continuously and maintain clear communication with their cloud providers to understand any potential impacts that may arise during the partnership. In other words, cloud security isn’t “set it and forget it” — it takes ongoing auditing to make sure you are still in compliance, which can be time consuming. It also takes cloud security policies that are continually refreshed and updated when any changes in requirements or regulations occur.
Common cloud security risks and threats
Now that we’ve talked a bit about the challenges, let’s dive into the risks and security threats that stretch beyond the regular cloud security issues. From malicious attacks to internal oversights, here are the most pressing cloud security risks and threats facing businesses today — and some cloud security standards to address them:
1. Attack surface
In the past, the corporate perimeter was pretty clear to define: anything within a corporate server needed to be clearly protected, as did the network that was needed to access those servers. (Remember corporate intranets? That was the biggest attack surface that needed protecting.)
But with cloud environments, your digital perimeter expands rapidly. Suddenly, you have to protect SaaS apps that can be accessed via the internet, social media channels, cloud servers, hybrid servers, public and private infrastructures… the list goes on. And this increase in endpoints means more opportunities for intrusion. For example, a poorly secured API might let attackers pivot deeper into your infrastructure. The attack surface can’t always be neatly fenced in, but you can protect the data being transferred to and from these endpoints.
When to flag it: Unusual API calls, frequent access attempts, or login attempts from unfamiliar geographies.
2. Human error
Gartner reports that by 2025, 99% of cloud security failures will be due to human error. Whether it's accidentally deleting a data bucket, misconfiguring a cloud server, or exposing credentials in code, even small mistakes can have major consequences. That doesn’t even account for the number of employees who may fall victim to a successful phishing or smishing attack.
When to flag it: Unintentional configuration changes, mass file deletions, or credentials accidentally committed to repositories.
3. Misconfiguration
This remains one of the top cloud security issues or cloud computing concerns. For example, a misconfigured S3 bucket can leave customer data exposed to the public internet. Or, something simple like improperly setting permissions or using a public sandbox environment can give unauthorized users access to sensitive data without meaning to. Automated configuration checks, as well as frequent and consistent QA between team members, can help mitigate these risks. But going a step further, it’s critical to use the principle of least privilege to make sure that only authorized users can make changes to configurations.
When to flag it: Major configuration changes, testing the ability to access data repositories or sandbox environments from an unauthorized device, or an increase in system errors.
4. Weak authentication controls
Without robust authentication, attackers can easily brute-force or phish their way into your systems. For example, let’s say someone in Accounting clicks on a link in their email that tricks them into giving up their credentials for a payment system… and that employee has reused that password across multiple websites and applications. “Yikes” would be an understatement, especially if that employee has access to every system in the company (i.e. no least-privilege access going on there).
MFA should be mandatory, especially for admin accounts and remote access tools. That way, if someone has gained access to one credential, it's useless without a host of others. MFA alone isn’t enough, however. Requiring connection to a Zero Trust VPN before even being able to access applications and networks is another key way to prevent unauthorized login attempts and lateral movement.
When to flag it: Multiple login attempts; login attempts from unfamiliar geographies, devices, or IP addresses; or employees alerting the IT team that they were involved in a personal data breach with potentially reused credentials.
5. Data breaches
From stolen intellectual property to compromised customer information, breaches can cost millions and erode customer — and employee — trust. According to IBM’s annual Cost of a Data Breach report, the global average cost of a data breach in 2024 was $4.88 million, a 10% increase over the prior year and the highest total ever. If you’re involved in a breach, even if it’s the fault of a third-party cloud provider, you may face legal action from your customers or even THEIR customers (if you are B2B), as well as regulatory fines and long-term reputational damage. Cloud security monitoring is a tremendous way to help safeguard against this.
When to flag it: Multiple login attempts; logins from unfamiliar geographical locations, devices, or IP addresses; or CVEs for any of your SaaS or cloud providers.
6. Insider threats
It’s natural to assume the best of employees and contractors. But unfortunately, not all risks come from the outside. Disgruntled employees or contractors may misuse access privileges, intentionally or unintentionally, leading to exposed sensitive data.
So what can you do to protect your business? After all, you need to trust your employees. That’s where the concept of Zero Trust comes into play. Zero Trust doesn’t mean that you single anyone out as untrustworthy. Rather, it means setting up a security strategy based on the idea that you should never implicitly trust any single login or access attempt — but should always verify. In fact, the core ethos of Zero Trust is “Never Trust, Always Verify.”
In practice, Zero Trust looks like requiring a Zero Trust VPN login to access core applications and assets. It also looks like utilizing the principle of least privilege, as we mentioned above. That means only granting access to applications and assets that the employee needs to complete their job function.
When to flag it: Employees attempting to access restricted assets, applications, or systems; logins from unfamiliar devices (even if in the same geographic location as the employee).
7. API vulnerabilities
APIs make the world go ’round… at least in the world of cloud environments and integrated software. Cloud environments rely heavily on APIs to keep essential systems communicating and working together. However, unprotected or vulnerable APIs can serve as entry points for attackers. Think injection attacks, broken authentication, broken functions, or misconfigurations. These can leave you a sitting target for attackers, so it’s critical to monitor APIs and related security risks across multi-cloud environments.
When to flag it: Unexpected API traffic patterns or malformed request attempts.
Prevent cloud security issues with OpenVPN
When it comes to cloud security issues, prevention is always better than reaction — and CloudConnexa helps organizations stay one step ahead.
OpenVPN offers a flexible, secure networking solution that protects data in-transit, ensures Zero Trust access policies, and gives IT full visibility across user behavior and device compliance — all critical elements for reducing cloud security risks.
Whether you’re running on AWS, Azure, a hybrid setup, or another cloud provider, OpenVPN makes secure cloud access simple, scalable, and smart.
Ready to kick your cloud security up a notch?