Don’t have your head in the clouds with data storage security

As a South African organisation, you can expect to experience an average of almost 20 cybersecurity incidents every year. This eye-opening statistic is reported in the latest IT Security Economics report, which points to an alarming increase in AI-driven cyber threats, banking malware, and cloud security risks as the causes.

One of the leading cybercrime culprits is the rise of AI. While a lot has been said about the positive impact AI can have on various industries, there is also a darker side to this technology.

Cybercriminals are using AI-driven technology to create audio and video-based deepfakes, making it more possible to impersonate individuals and bypass verification systems. Social-engineering attacks are also becoming more automated, sophisticated, and personalised due to AI technology. AI is also helping criminals to exploit algorithms used for bypassing passwords (Source: AI and Cybersecurity: A New Era).

These cutting-edge criminal tactics can be deployed across vulnerabilities in a company’s cybersecurity defences. Cloud environments are no exception.

The mistakes made by Uber, Facebook, and Dropbox
While AI advancements are shining a spotlight on the importance of robust cybersecurity measures for cloud environments, protecting sensitive business data has always been critical. Many leading companies, including in the information and technology industry, have learned the hard way how critical cloud security measures are.

Over the past 15 years, high-profile cloud security failures include names such as Dropbox, Uber, Accenture, Facebook, and even Microsoft. With Facebook, unsecured cloud storage resulted in 540 million private user records being exposed. Uber’s hacking incident gave cybercriminals access to 57 million users’ private data.

These incidents may have occured on a massive scale, but the results are the same for every cloud security breach: customers lose their trust in the company, the financial damage can run into the thousands or even millions of rands, and private or sensitive data is placed in the hands of cybercriminals.

In the time of rapid AI advancement and cloud migration, this means companies must reinforce their defences in the cloud environment.

Wanting secure cloud storage isn’t the same as having one
Surprisingly, despite these real-life cautionary tales of large, tech-based global companies falling victim to cybercriminals, only 5% of South African businesses are fully prepared to defend against modern attacks (Source: IT News Africa).

On the positive side, over 90% organisation do understand that AI threats are increasing, that better threat detection is needed, and that a response and recovery strategy is required as part of a proactive cybersecurity strategy.

Unfortunately, a large gap still exists between South African organisations understanding they need a cybersecurity strategy that covers the entire business’s operations, including cloud environments, and having one in place.

With Dotcom Cybersecurity, this doesn’t have to be true for your business. With the help of our cybersecurity experts, you can fortify your entire network’s security with advanced security measures.

Dotcom Cybersecurity’s expert cloud network protection strategy will ensure your business’s cloud environments are protected against the seven most vulnerable cyber threat areas:

1. Network segmentation & micro segmentation:
   Dividing networks into smaller, isolated segments to minimise the impact of a breach.
   Using micro segmentation to enforce granular security policies between workloads.
2. Firewalls & intrusion prevention systems:
   Cloud-native and third-party firewalls to filter traffic and prevent unauthorised access.
   Intrusion Detection & Prevention System to monitor and block threats.
3. Zero Trust Network Access:
   Verifying every user and device before granting access.
   Enforcing least privilege access to limit exposure.
4. Secure Access Service Edge:
   Combining networking and security functions in a cloud-delivered model.
5. Identity & Access Management and Multi-Factor Authentication:
   Managing user identities and access controls to enforce security policies.
6. Data encryption & secure connectivity:
   Encrypting data to protect against interception.
7. Cloud Security Posture Management:
   Continuously monitoring cloud environments for misconfigurations and vulnerabilities.

Cloud technology is here to stay – and so is AI. Make sure that your business benefit from these modern advancements instead of putting your operations at risk.

Visit the DotCom Security website, e-mail info@dotcomsecurity.co.za or call us on (+27) 12 003 6596.