Cloud services – a safer refuge from cyberattacks
Alongside the devastating war in Ukraine, intense battles are also taking place in the digital world. Every day, Latvian companies and government institutions face cyberattacks aimed at disrupting services for clients or infecting computer systems with viruses. While these attacks target various entities, cloud service users are in a better position, as they are more likely to encounter issues due to their own oversight rather than infrastructure problems.
According to data from the IT security incident response institution CERT.LV, the number of commercially motivated attacks has dropped significantly, replaced by politically motivated ones. Most of these originate from Russia and Belarus and are directed at targets in countries that actively support Ukraine. This includes Latvia, where denial-of-service and ransomware attacks occur almost daily, even against seemingly unrelated targets such as sports clubs. Under these circumstances, companies are forced to pay increased attention to cybersecurity and seek the most secure methods for data storage.
"Based on our experts' observations, we can say that cyber incidents in Latvia, such as ransomware attacks, have affected both clients who store their data in the cloud and those who store it locally. However, incidents specifically related to cloud services most often occur due to the clients' own carelessness or negligence," emphasizes CERT.LV representative Madara Krutova. She adds that the most frequently observed errors involve insecure access control configurations, poor management and storage of authentication data and service keys, as well as forgotten or insecurely managed development environments, the compromise of which allows attackers to gain access to production environments as well.
"Major cloud service providers are generally better protected and more adequately prepared for potential incident investigations than locally installed systems. Therefore, it is important to choose reliable cloud services that do not process data outside the EU, NATO, or the European Economic Area," explains M. Krutova. "It is also important for clients to pay attention to exactly what they are paying for, as a cloud service might just be a server with computing power, which does not automatically include backups, long-term storage, or customized audit logging."
A recent survey by the IT company Visma Enterprise found that the majority of respondents consider cloud services to be the most suitable solution.
61% of respondents indicate that these services relieve them of the burden of purchasing or renting servers, 36% consider the "cloud" a more secure solution, and 28% highly value the ability to always work with the latest version of software and receive automatic updates.
"Our experience shows that using accounting systems in the cloud better protects clients from potential data loss during a cyberattack. Responsible cloud service providers store data in certified data centers and create multiple backups. Even if one center is hit by an attack, data can be recovered from another. Companies that rely on their own servers or even keep all important information on a single computer's hard drive may not have such options," shares Viesturs Slaidiņš, head of Jumis Pro, the developer of Jumis.
Due to convenience and security considerations, cloud services are becoming increasingly popular in Latvia. For example, 65% of all users of the business management and accounting system Jumis have already chosen the cloud-based version of the software.
