Cloud computing gives small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) many growth opportunities through creative solutions, but with these new opportunities come many new cloud security threats, such as misconfigurations, ransomware, and more.
There is an ever-increasing trend towards a rise in both the frequency and sophistication of cyber criminals. So, it is essential for business owners to know what types of cyber threats they may encounter and to take the necessary steps to protect themselves and their most valuable assets. This article will discuss the most significant issues facing SMBs in terms of securing sensitive data that is stored in the Cloud and provide actionable recommendations for increasing SMB cyber defences.
The Expanding Cloud Attack Surface
The move to the cloud increases the overall digital footprint of SMBs and, therefore, increases the likelihood that cybercriminals will find vulnerabilities to exploit.
The 2024 SMB Cyber Security Survey published by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce revealed that 60% of SMBs are extremely concerned with cybercriminals for very good reasons. If a cybersecurity breach were to occur at an SMB, the potential ramifications could be disastrous. In fact, in the same survey, 27% of SMBs indicated they believed that if they experienced even one cybersecurity incident, it would likely put them out of business.
The large number of cloud providers, cloud applications, and endpoint devices contributes to the overall increase in cloud access points, thereby increasing the number of potential perimeters for cyber criminals to attack. SMBs, who potentially have limited IT personnel, struggle to manage and secure this increasingly complex Cloud environment.
The Shared Responsibility Model
Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud offer protection for the Cloud infrastructure; however, the SMB is responsible for the security of the data stored in the Cloud.
The Shared Responsibility Model is commonly misunderstood by SMB owners, creating an additional level of risk when storing and processing data in the cloud. The customer is responsible for maintaining their data, applications, and cloud access. Therefore, what the customer must do in order to keep their Cloud.
Depending on which cloud service model the customer has (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS), the division of responsibility changes. Misunderstanding the distinctions among the service model types can leave the customer vulnerable to substantial security breaches.
As such, small business owners should identify their security responsibilities and apply the necessary controls to protect their cloud assets.
Cloud Misconfigurations
Misconfiguration is one of the top three threats to cloud security, regardless of the organization's size. In fact, cloud misconfigurations include things like leaving a storage bucket open or using a weak or default password.
A 2025 report found that more than 60% of organizations experienced cloud security incidents in the previous year, primarily due to cloud misconfigurations. Just one incorrect setting configuration in a small business could lead to data breaches, criminal charges, or financial losses.
The best way to reduce these risks is to establish a culture of strong configuration management processes and to conduct regular assessments of the cloud environment to identify possible weaknesses and address them before a security incident occurs.
The Expanding Cloud Attack Surface
In addition to the larger attack surface and the possibility of misconfiguration, small businesses also face a variety of other cloud security challenges.
Many small businesses face the unique challenge of insufficient budgets, and therefore may not have sufficient personnel with the technical or security engineering expertise required to adequately secure their data in a cloud environment.
1. Lack of Engineers and Security Resources
The primary reason that SMB's cannot secure their data is due to insufficient technical resources and the lack of a security team (only one or two Engineers working themselves to death). Due to a lack of sufficient resources, SMB's find it difficult to implement and continue to maintain all of the essential controls that are required to ensure that they are not an attractive target for cybercriminals.
2. Poor Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Implementing strong IAM practices is necessary for security to prevent unwanted access to cloud resources. Most SMBs struggle with weak/guessable passwords, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and proper management of user privileges, among other issues. Weak IAM policies directly increase an attacker’s chances of gaining unauthorized access to sensitive information within a Company.
3. The rowing Ransomware Threat
Ransomware is one of the fastest-growing cyber threats to all businesses, and increasingly, small businesses are becoming targets for ransomware attacks by cybercriminals. It locks data on a company’s systems and then offers cybercriminals considerable sums of cryptocurrency to unlock that data.
Attacks like these can place a significant financial drain on all businesses. But if a small business lacks the resources to back them up and develop an effective plan to deal with them, the results can be catastrophic.
4. Ensuring Regulatory Compliance
Small businesses will increasingly find themselves with more laws relating to data protection and will be tasked with ensuring compliance with them as part of their operation due to the rising importance of regulatory compliance.
Examples of specific standards include GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS. Many other regulations are also being placed on small businesses. In addition, the potential to incur large fines due to non-compliance, along with the reputational damage that can occur to a small business as a result of non-compliance with a certain regulation.
This is an important factor for many small businesses, as they do not have a significant enough legal or compliance area to be able to properly comprehend and implement appropriate measures for data security.
5. The Need for Better Security Solutions
In order to defend against today's cyber threats, organizations need an effective solution that allows them full control and visibility into their cloud environment. Some examples of these advanced security solutions include vulnerability management, CIEM (Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management), and CSPM (Cloud Security Posture Management).
Unfortunately, many of these advanced solutions are either too expensive or very difficult to implement for the majority of small businesses. As such, small business owners should seek out security solutions specifically created with small business budgets in mind, including options that provide cloud native runtime security to protect all cloud workloads.
Cloud Security Best Practices for Small Businesses
Entrepreneurs with small businesses can improve their security practices when using the cloud by taking some simple steps to help keep them safe from data breaches.
- Implement MFA on all cloud accounts to help avoid the risk of an unauthorized person accessing a company's data.
- Conduct regular security audits and reviews of cloud service configurations to identify misconfigured services and correct those issues prior to attackers exploiting those vulnerabilities.
- Establish a data backup and disaster recovery plan to mitigate the effects of a ransomware attack.
- Provide security training to employees to help them avoid human error and reduce the likelihood of breaches due to employee mistakes.
- Consider choosing integrated cloud solutions for improved visibility and control over cloud-based services that do not require a significant amount of expertise to manage.
Wrapping Up
Cloud computing offers many benefits for small business owners. Unfortunately, there are also many potential risks associated with using cloud-based applications and services that can result from accessing information online.
Therefore, small business owners should educate themselves on the most common issues associated with securing cloud-based data so they have the tools and resources they need to build the proper level of data protection to keep their businesses safe and help them thrive over time.
Cybercrime is escalating tremendously every day, with small businesses becoming increasingly victimized by this growing cybercrime trend. As such, it is increasingly critical for small business owners to proactively manage their data's security by creating a strategic plan for safeguarding the organisation's information stored on cloud applications.
Through the development of strong access control procedures, conducting regular audits of the security settings for your infrastructure, and determining the best solutions for securing your organization’s cloud-based information, successful cloud security can be attained.
