Over a decade since its advent, cloud computing continues to enable organizational agility through scalability, efficiency and resilience. As clients shift from early experiments to strategic workloads, persistent security gaps demand urgent attention even as providers expand infrastructure safeguards.
The prevalence of cloud-native services has grown exponentially over the past decade, with cloud providers consistently introducing a multitude of new services at an impressive pace. Now, the contemporary cloud environment is not only larger but also more diverse. Unfortunately, that size and complexity mean that the prevalence of knowledge gaps in cloud security has also increased to match.
A focus on user error
While continuous advancements are enhancing the security of cloud infrastructure, challenges persist in securing client cloud environments. The complexity of cloud security is exacerbated as organizations with varying levels of cloud dependency and maturity encounter unexpected problems on their journey. As cloud usage intensifies, new issues come to light.
According to Gartner, through 2025, “99% of cloud security failures will be the customer’s fault.” This assertion suggests that despite the inherent security measures in the cloud, security lapses predominantly stem from how clients use and safeguard their cloud resources. This perspective has led to a somewhat accusatory stance, with the onus placed squarely on clients for the outcomes of security breaches as spelled out in the cloud security shared responsibility model.
This is hardly a new issue. Even with the swift advancements in technology characterizing modern hyperscale cloud environments, security misconfigurations have been a predominant concern in cloud security for at least a decade — if not longer.
