Cloud security: the shared responsibility model
The most dangerous misconception: “it's in the cloud, so the provider protects it”. The reality is the shared responsibility model: the provider secures the cloud itself (buildings, hardware, core network) and you secure what you put in it: your data, users and permissions, and settings. Moving from IaaS to SaaS shrinks your share, but never to zero.
| Identity and access management (IAM) | Every employee has their own account with the least privilege they need, and nobody uses the root admin account day to day. |
| Multi-factor authentication (MFA) | Mandatory for every account, especially admins. |
| Encryption | Data encrypted at rest and in transit (HTTPS). |
| Monitoring and logs | Log every sign-in and change, with alerts on anything unusual. |
Watch outThe top cause of cloud data leaks isn't a genius hack but a misconfiguration: say, a storage bucket full of customer files left public by mistake. That's why configuration reviews are central to any audit.