Cloud security threats: Misconfigurations and other risks you can’t afford to ignore

Cloud infrastructure is now the foundation of how modern organizations operate—powering everything from applications to data pipelines. But with this flexibility comes a growing set of risks. As environments expand, cloud security threats are becoming more frequent and more severe, driven by limited visibility, misconfigured services, and confusion around shared responsibility.

Among the most damaging and persistent issues are cloud security misconfigurations, which continue to expose critical assets to unauthorized access and privilege abuse.

To avoid falling into this trap, security teams need a clear strategy for identifying and addressing the most common cloud security issues before attackers do. In this blog, we break down the key risks, technical mistakes, and practical steps to reduce exposure—keep reading to learn what to watch for and how to fix it.

Misconfigurations: Still the Achilles' heel of cloud security

Most breaches in cloud environments don’t stem from zero-day vulnerabilities. Instead, they arise from basic configuration errors that could have been prevented. According to recent incident response reports, misconfigurations account for more than 80% of cloud breaches.

Some of the most common misconfiguration risks include:

• Publicly accessible storage buckets (e.g., AWS S3, Azure Blob)
  Misconfigured permissions can expose sensitive data directly to the internet without any form of authentication.
  
• Overly permissive IAM roles and policies
  Granting broad access to users, services, or applications increases the blast radius if a credential is compromised.
  
• Unrestricted inbound traffic in security groups or NSGs
  Open ports—especially for SSH (22), RDP (3389), or databases—are frequently scanned by attackers.
  
• Lack of encryption for data at rest or in transit
  Failing to enforce TLS or configure encryption settings properly leads to privacy and compliance risks.
  
• Disabled or misconfigured logging and monitoring tools
  Without audit trails (e.g., AWS CloudTrail, Azure Monitor), it's nearly impossible to detect suspicious activity or investigate incidents post-facto.
  

These issues often result from rushed deployments, insufficient DevSecOps integration, or unclear ownership between teams. They’re exacerbated by the scale and dynamism of cloud environments, where assets are spun up and down rapidly.

Common cloud security issues beyond misconfiguration

While misconfigurations top the list, they don’t stand alone. Security teams must also account for a broader set of common cloud security issues that complicate defense efforts:

• Shadow IT
  Employees or teams deploying cloud services without centralized oversight often bypass corporate security controls and introduce unknown risks.
  
• API vulnerabilities
  Cloud APIs are frequently exposed to the public internet, making them prime targets for enumeration, brute force, or injection-based attacks.
  
• Lack of proper identity and access management (IAM)
  The complexity of IAM policies across cloud providers can result in excessive privilege grants, role chaining abuse, or user sprawl.
  
• Poor container and Kubernetes security hygiene
  Cloud-native workloads are often orchestrated through Kubernetes or containers, which require their own layer of runtime protection, namespace isolation, and secrets management.
  
• Shared responsibility confusion
  Providers like AWS, Azure, and GCP clearly define where their responsibility ends and the customer’s begins—but this is still misunderstood by many organizations. Cloud-native does not mean secure-by-default.
  

Real-world consequences of cloud missteps

Strike’s own pentesting engagements have revealed a recurring pattern: once an attacker gains a foothold—whether via leaked credentials, a forgotten test environment, or exposed buckets—they can pivot quickly using lateral movement techniques.

In one case, a misconfigured AWS IAM policy allowed a penetration tester to escalate privileges and assume an administrative role within minutes. From there, they accessed sensitive database snapshots and internal documentation stored in misconfigured S3 buckets—demonstrating the ease with which attackers can move across services when security hygiene is lacking.

How to detect and prevent cloud security threats

Security teams should take a proactive, continuous approach to managing cloud security threats, emphasizing prevention and rapid detection:

1. Implement continuous external attack surface monitoring
   Visibility is step one. You can’t protect assets you don’t know exist. Monitoring your exposed cloud infrastructure in real time helps detect new subdomains, services, or ports unintentionally left open.
   
2. Enforce least privilege with granular IAM policies
   Regularly audit IAM roles, permissions, and policies. Use role-based access control (RBAC) and avoid hardcoded credentials in scripts or environment variables.
   
3. Automate misconfiguration detection
   Tools like AWS Config, Azure Policy, and third-party CSPM (Cloud Security Posture Management) platforms help enforce compliance baselines and catch risky changes early.
   
4. Enable logging and centralize alerts
   Activate native cloud logging features and send logs to a SIEM for correlation and real-time alerting. This is essential for rapid incident detection and forensic investigation.
   
5. Run periodic security reviews and pentests
   Automated scanners are useful, but only expert-led cloud pentesting can simulate real attacker behavior across services and roles.
   
6. Maintain an up-to-date asset inventory
   Continuously discover cloud assets—including ephemeral ones—and tag them according to environment (prod/dev), owner, and sensitivity.

Cloud adoption doesn't have to come at the cost of security—but it often does when misconfigurations and visibility gaps go unaddressed. Security teams must prioritize not just cloud security controls, but continuous oversight, accurate inventories, and clear responsibility lines. Attackers aren't exploiting new vulnerabilities—they’re leveraging avoidable mistakes.

Strike helps teams proactively secure their infrastructure through premium pentesting and continuous attack surface monitoring. If you're ready to identify and fix every cloud misconfiguration before attackers can exploit it, talk to us.