Not long ago, the cloud was sold to businesses as the “safer alternative”—the place where security is handled automatically by giants like AWS, Google, or Microsoft.
But if you’ve been following cybersecurity news in India, you’ll know that attackers are now treating cloud platforms as their biggest playground.
And they’re doing it with alarming success.
One of the most widely shared stories last year was about the data leak impacting an EdTech company where a misconfigured S3 bucket exposed student records.
If multimillion-dollar companies can make such accidental mistakes, imagine how easily it can happen to smaller teams.
Why Hackers Are Going After Cloud Systems
After speaking to several cloud engineers and analysts, a few consistent themes keep coming up:
1.Misconfigurations Are Everywhere
Cloud providers give you secure tools.
But the moment someone configures a bucket as “public” or uses a weak IAM policy, all bets are off.
The biggest problem?
These mistakes often go unnoticed for months.
2. The Cloud Stores Everything Valuable
Customer data. Payment information. Business IP.
Attackers don’t need to break into a physical data centre anymore—they just need access credentials.
3. Small Companies Moved to the Cloud Too Fast
And attackers know that smaller firms often skip audits, delay patching, or don’t enforce MFA.
CNBC once reported that 65% of small businesses experienced a cloud-related cyber incident in 2024.
What a Cloud Network Security Service Actually Covers
Think of cloud security as less about “locking things” and more about “watching everything.”
A good cloud network security service includes:
- Monitoring APIs and unusual access attempts
- Constant configuration checks
- Identity and access controls
- Securing containerised workloads (Kubernetes, Docker)
- Encryption and DLP
- Alerts when something doesn’t look normal
A strong cyber security service provider won’t just sell tools—they’ll explain what’s happening in plain language and give you actionable steps to fix things.
A Real Example: Insurance Company Cloud Breach
In mid-2024, several Indian newspapers covered a breach involving an insurance aggregator where an exposed cloud server leaked tens of thousands of policyholder details.
The breach happened not because of a sophisticated hack, but due to an unprotected database instance left accessible on the internet.
One misconfiguration.
Thousands of affected customers.
Months of brand repair.
If anything proves that companies—big or small—need proper cloud monitoring, this is it.
FAQs
- What does cloud network security include?
Monitoring, identity control, vulnerability scanning, encryption, configuration management, and threat detection across all cloud workloads.
- Do small companies need a cloud security provider?
More than ever. Cloud attacks don’t discriminate based on company size—they target whoever has weak controls.
- How do cloud security services prevent data leaks?
By fixing misconfigurations, blocking suspicious access, monitoring unusual behaviour, and enforcing strong access and encryption policies.
