Quantifying Security Risks in Cloud Infrastructures: A Data-driven Approach

Businesses increasingly outsource their ICT services to cloud environments, mostly driven by considerations about costs, processes and security. However concerns around cloud exposure against cyber-security attacks are also growing. This bring about the question if the cloud really makes us more secure, or if it merely changes the type of threats we are exposed to. This PhD project aims at addressing this question by focusing on cloud infrastructure security. Using Internet measurements, we will take a data-driven approach to identify vulnerabilities and single points of failure in cloud infrastructure. Based on our analysis, we will propose solutions to mitigate these vulnerabilities and enhance the overall security of cloud environments.

I. Introduction

In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the outsourcing of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) services to the cloud, both in the public and private sectors. Fig. 1 shows the growth in adoption of three large cloud providers, Microsoft Azure, Cloudflare and Amazon, in the period 2016-2023, based on the number of.com domains residing in those providers’ Autonomous Systems. While in 2016 around 10M domains were related to the cloud, this has grown about 3 times in the observation period (around 30M domains).