It seems that most cloud security lapses are due to misconfigurations.
The biggest problem is that when deploying cloud environments, many pieces need to be configured, including the routing and firewall rules that grant access to the servers being deployed, the servers themselves, and the application-level firewalls and access rules within those servers. With so many components, and with effectively non-existent security in most default configurations, it is easy to see why one or more components may be deployed in an insecure state.
Even when users go through these configurations, some settings (like access control lists or ACLs) can be extremely long and complex to manage. This means that extensive testing is required to validate each rule. When time is insufficient, insecure settings may persist. According to the Cloud Security Alliance’s report Top Threats to Cloud Computing: Egregious Eleven,
[a]n absence of effective change control is a common cause of misconfiguration in a cloud environment. Cloud environments and cloud computing methodologies differ from traditional information technology (IT) in ways that make changes more difficult to control.How to Prepare for Misconfigurations Clouding the Corporate Skies
After reading articles like this one, I think of Americans as vacuous, vain, fools.
For some American families, one kitchen is apparently not enough. What is wrong with having just one kitchen? Well, people cook in kitchens, and when they cook in kitchens, they make messes, and then, to make matters worse, if their kitchen is in full view from the rest of the house—as many today are—their mess is out in the open visible as they eat their meals, hang out with their families, entertain their guests, and go about their lives.
That is why one company, Schumacher Homes of Akron, Ohio, has a fresh new design on offer: a house with an open floor plan, with its kitchen, dining area, and living room all flowing into one another. But then, behind the first kitchen, lies another. A “messy” kitchen. There, the preparation for or remainders from a meal or party can be deposited for later cleanup, out-of-sight, out-of-mind.
That this is “necessary” at all is a consequence of the rise of the open floor plan in the first place.
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In this respect, the open plan might represent the most distinctly American home design possible: to labor in vain against ever-rising demands, imposed mostly by our own choices, all the while insisting that, actually, we love it. It’s a prison, but at least it’s one without walls.The Curse of an Open Floor Plan by Ian Bogost