The corporate world has been engulfed by the use of the cloud. Scalability, agility, and cost-efficiency have all become core pillars of contemporary business strategy courtesy of its pledge. However, this fast movement has been premised on an unsafe guess; a myth that the cloud is, by default, safe. This is the critical gap in cloud computing security where businesses are most vulnerable.
It’s an easy trap to fall into. Businesses see the massive, fortified data centers of major cloud providers and assume that security is an included feature, like an airbag in a new car. However, in the real sense, the provider just constructs the car, you are the one who will have to drive, lock the doors, and do not leave the keys in the ignition.
This myth is a result of the misconception about the Shared Responsibility Model. Although cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, and Google develop a fortified and resilient infrastructure, they merely ensure the security of the cloud. The customer of your business is responsible for security in the cloud. This includes your data, applications, access policies, and configurations. STL Digital helps organizations build secure, resilient cloud ecosystems precisely because default settings are designed for usability, not for a zero-trust world.
The Reality of Shared Responsibility
The most dangerous risk to the cloud environment of an organization is not a high-tech zero-day attack but a simple and easily avoidable misconfiguration. It is the customers who are responsible for these misconfigurations and not the provider.
Why does this happen? The default policies of a new cloud account are usually permissive.” They are optimized to help your developers build and deploy quickly, not to lock down your data. This can leave massive security holes, such as:
- Publicly Accessible Storage: The infamous “open S3 bucket” that leaves sensitive customer data exposed to the entire internet. This is the most common and damaging error. A developer spins up a storage bucket for a project, and the “public” toggle is left on by default or flipped for “temporary” testing, which then becomes permanent. The result is terabytes of sensitive customer PII, intellectual property, or company financials being indexed by search engines and scraped by malicious bots.
- Overly-Permissive IAM Roles: Giving a user or application “administrator” access when it only needs to read a single file. This is the digital equivalent of giving a new employee a master key to the entire building. A developer may also provide a full admin right to a particular application which only requires reading one database in the name of speed. If that application is ever compromised, the attacker now has the keys to your entire cloud kingdom, able to delete backups, steal data, and spin up cryptocurrency mining servers on your dime.
- Unpatched Workloads: Spinning up a virtual machine and failing to apply critical security patches. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) model implies that you would be responsible for an operating system. A failure to adopt the necessary critical OS patches to resolve the known vulnerabilities like the Log4j or the Heartbleed is a free ride to an automated assault.
- Exposed Ports:Ports such as RDP or SSH are left open to the world, waiting to be attacked by brute force. Having open ports to the internet like RDP (Windows) or SSH (Linux) is a warning to the attackers. There are malicious scanners that are continuously searching the internet to find these open ports and they will execute unending brute force attacks in order to crack your password.
Relying on defaults is like moving into a new house and leaving the front door unlocked because the builder said the locks were new. The problem is magnified by the sheer complexity of modern IT. This problem is now amplified exponentially by the move to hybrid and multi-cloud environments. The default settings in AWS are different from Azure, which are different from Google Cloud. With teams using all three, the complexity of managing a consistent, secure baseline becomes almost impossible without a dedicated strategy.
The High Cost of an Unchecked “Default”
The financial and reputational stakes for failing to secure your cloud environment are staggering. This massive financial risk is forcing organizations to react by increasing their security budgets significantly. Forrester projects that global technology spending will grow by 5.6% in 2025 to reach $4.9 trillion, up from $4.7 trillion in 2024, reflecting a significant acceleration. Key growth drivers include the rapid adoption of software, IT services, generative AI, and cloud technologies.
This is why organizations are scrambling to respond. According to IDC, “Security software will be the largest technology group in 2025, representing more than half of the worldwide security market this year, as well as the fastest growing one, with a 14.4% year-on-year growth rate.” The research notes this growth “will be driven especially by cloud native application protection platform, identity and access management software, and security analytics software growth, reflecting the special focus that companies will put on integrated cyberthreats detection and response around their whole organizational perimeter.”
This is further confirmed by Gartner, which projects worldwide end-user spending on information security will reach $213 billion in 2025.
However, spending more money is not the answer if it’s not spent on the right strategy. You cannot buy your way out of a bad configuration.
Moving Beyond Default: A Proactive Security Posture
Securing the cloud requires a fundamental shift from a passive, default-accepting mindset to a proactive, security-first culture. This involves implementing robust Cloud computing security best practices from day one.
- Embrace Zero Trust: The fundamental concept of never trust, always verify is a mandatory requirement of Cyber security best practices. Suppose all users, devices and networks are malicious. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) should be used everywhere, the least privilege principle should be used and your networks should be segmented, so that they do not move horizontally.
- Automate Your Defenses: In a complex cloud environment, manual security is a losing battle. Use Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) tools to continuously scan for misconfigurations. Implement “policy as code” to ensure that any new infrastructure deployed automatically adheres to your security standards for Secure Cloud Storage.
- Gain Visibility and Control: What you can not see you can not protect. The first step is to gain a single perspective of all assets, identities, and data flows in all your cloud providers. This is where professional Cloud consulting services can be of invaluable aid, helping you map your attack surface and gain insight into the risk as it exerts itself in practice.
- Partner for Expertise: The cybersecurity skills gap is real. Not many organizations possess the on-site skills that are needed to cope with the intricacies of 24/7/365 cloud security. That is why so many savvy businesses use the services of a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP). MSSP can provide the dedicated equipment, well-trained personnel and twenty four hour vigilant that will aid in detecting and responding to the threats before they become a catastrophe.
Conclusion:
The cloud is not a fort, it is a combination of building blocks. Its security is not an option you get as a default, rather, it is a healthy system that you have to design, construct, and proactively sustain.
The default safety myth is a comfortable myth, though, a very expensive one. Through the shared responsibility model, default settings rejection and having a proactive security strategy, you can transform your cloud from a potential liability to your most secure and powerful asset.
At STL Digital, we help organizations demystify the cloud and build the resilient, secure, and compliant environments they need to innovate with confidence. Our expertise in cloud computing security ensures you don’t let a “default” setting define your security posture.
