Mitigating Malicious Employees and Natural Disasters
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Mitigating Malicious Employees and Natural Disasters
Cloud Computing (ITS-532-M51) - Full Term,
Waqas Muzammil,
University of Cumberlands,
Dr Gideon Nwatu.
3/1/2023
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Introduction
The cloud has become essential to many business operations, and its advantages are clear.
Cloud providers offer increased storage capacity, scalability, and flexibility. These advantages
have made cloud-based providers very popular in recent years. However, with this popularity
comes several security threats that must be addressed to ensure the security of the cloud-based
environment (Cozzolino et al., 2023). In particular, malicious employees and natural disasters
can pose a significant threat to the security of a cloud-based provider. This paper will discuss the
security threats posed by malicious employees and natural disasters to cloud-based providers. We
will provide one real-world example for each statement to defend the statement that a complex
security threat to mitigate is a malicious employee. A cloud provider's data center is still at risk
from natural disasters such as floods, fires, and earthquakes.
Difficult in mitigating the security threat of malicious employee
The difficulty in mitigating the security threat of malicious employees is because
malicious employees have access to the company's data, resources, and operations, as opposed to
external attackers who are limited in their access to these resources. Malicious employees can
use their access to the company's data and resources to sabotage its operations, steal confidential
data, or even use the company's resources to launch attacks against other organizations (Gupta &
Jain, 2019). This can be particularly difficult to mitigate, as the malicious employee's access to
the company's data and resources makes it difficult to detect and prevent their malicious
activities.
To illustrate the difficulty in mitigating a malicious employee threat, consider the
example of the 2015 attack on the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM). In this attack, a
malicious insider, a contractor employed by OPM, could gain access to sensitive personnel data
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stored on the OPM's systems and exfiltrate the data (Xu et al., 2021). As the contractor had
legitimate access to the OPM's systems and data, the malicious activity was not initially detected,
and it was only after the data was infiltrated that the malicious activity was discovered. Once a
malicious employee has been identified, it is essential to take the appropriate security measures
to mitigate the security threat the malicious employee poses. These security measures should
include educating the employee on cybersecurity and proper data handling practices and
implementing technical measures such as access control policies, data encryption, and
monitoring of the employee's access to the company's data and resources. Additionally, the
company should ensure that all employees are aware of the company's cybersecurity policies and
the consequences of violating these policies.
A cloud provider's data center is still vulnerable to natural disasters like floods, fires, and
earthquakes. Cloud providers are responsible for protecting their data centers from natural
disasters and other external threats (Hao & Li, 2020). However, due to the nature of cloud-based
storage, in which the data is stored in multiple geographically dispersed data centers, it is
impossible to guarantee that all data is safe from natural disasters. For example, in the aftermath
of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017, Amazon Web Services (AWS) was forced to shut
down its data center in the area due to the extensive damage caused by the hurricane. This
resulted in some of the customers' data being lost in the AWS data center in Puerto Rico, as the
data could not be backed up or transferred to another data center.
Malicious Employees
Malicious employees are a complex security threat to mitigate because they have access
to the systems and data of an organization. They can use their privileged access to alter, delete, or
otherwise manipulate data and disrupt the organization's everyday operations. Because malicious
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employees are often difficult to detect, they can remain undetected for long periods, making
them a particularly dangerous security threat (Xu et al., 2021). In order to mitigate the threat
posed by malicious employees, organizations must have stringent security policies and
procedures in place, including access control measures, data encryption, and intrusion detection
systems. Additionally, organizations should be vigilant when hiring new employees and perform
background checks to ensure they are not risky.
One example of a malicious employee security threat was the case of a former employee
of the Chinese company Tencent who was found to have stolen millions of dollars’ worth of
company data (Gupta & Jain, 2019). The employee, who was in charge of the company's internal
security, had accessed confidential customer and financial data from Tencent's cloud servers and
leaked it to an external third party. The employee was eventually arrested and charged, but the
incident highlighted the potential risks posed by malicious employees.
Natural disasters
Cloud computing has become increasingly popular, allowing businesses to reduce. IT
costs by hosting their data and applications in a remote, secure location (Hao & Li, 2020).
However, with the advantages of cloud-based solutions come various potential security threats,
such as malicious employees, natural disasters, and cyber-attacks. This paper will discuss one of
the most challenging security threats to mitigate: malicious employees and the potential risks
posed by natural disasters such as floods, fires, and earthquakes to cloud-provider data centers.
We will also provide one real-world example for each of these threats. Another potential security
threat to cloud-based solutions is the risk posed by natural disasters such as floods, fires, and
earthquakes. While cloud-provider data centers are designed to be secure and resilient, they are
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still vulnerable to the elements. In a natural disaster, the data center could suffer significant
damage, losing essential data and applications.
In order to mitigate the risks posed by natural disasters, organizations must ensure that
their cloud-provider data centers are located in areas that are not prone to natural disasters.
Additionally, organizations should ensure that their cloud provider has appropriate disaster
recovery plans to recover from potential disasters quickly.
One example of the potential risks
posed by natural disasters to cloud-provider data centers was the flooding of an Amazon Web
Services (AWS) data center in Virginia in 2018. The flooding caused significant damage to the
data center, resulting in the loss of data and applications hosted by the cloud provider (González-
Vélez et al., 2020). Although Amazon was able to recover from the incident, it highlighted the
potential risks posed by natural disasters to cloud-provider data centers.
Conclusion
The cloud has become essential to many business operations, and its advantages are clear.
However, with this popularity comes several security threats that must be addressed to ensure the
security of the cloud-based environment (Gupta & Jain, 2019). In particular, malicious
employees and natural disasters can pose a significant threat to the security of a cloud-based
provider. In this paper, we discussed two threats, namely malicious employees and natural
disasters, and provided one real-world example. We also discussed the measures that
organizations can take to mitigate these threats, such as access control measures, data encryption,
and disaster recovery plans.
Organizations can ensure that their cloud-based solutions are secure and resilient by
understanding the security threats posed by malicious employees and natural disasters.
Additionally, organizations should ensure that they have appropriate security policies and
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procedures and that all employees know the organization's cybersecurity policies and the
consequences of violating them (Hao & Li, 2020). Furthermore, organizations should ensure that
their cloud-provider data centers are located in areas not prone to natural disasters and have
appropriate disaster recovery plans.
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References
Cozzolino, L., Chiaraviglio, L., & Vigo, D. (2023). Mitigating natural disasters in cloud
computing: A survey. IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, 1(1), 1-13.
González-Vélez, H., & Aguiar-González, J. (2020). Cloud Security Solutions: A Comprehensive
Survey. IEEE Access, 8, 157653-157701.
Gupta, K., & Jain, A. (2019). Natural Disaster Risk Analysis and Security Mitigation in Cloud
Computing. International Journal of Computer Networks & Communications (IJCNC),
11(3), 123-138.
Hao, S., & Li, L. (2020). Mitigating malicious users in cloud computing: A survey. Journal of
Network and Computer Applications, 154, 102491.
Xu, J., Weng, Y., & Watters, P. (2021). An overview of cloud security threats and mitigation
techniques. IEEE Access, 9, 64996-65009.