After moving to the cloud, many startups usually feel all the weight is lifted, and they are finally free from hardware headaches. They assume major cloud providers like Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud take care of every aspect of cloud security.
These providers protect things beneath, but you are still responsible for the safety of your data, settings, and access rules. This is where shared responsibility comes in. Not understanding how this works correctly can mean trouble, like exposing your operating system, applications, and data to cyber attackers.
To help you avoid these failures, in this article, I will break down how shared responsibility works and the necessary actions you and your team need to take to secure your cloud environment. If you are already leveraging cloud computing or heading there, this is for you.
What is the Shared Responsibility Model all about?
Shared responsibility is the collaborative effort between cloud providers and their customers. This model specifies the responsibilities of both parties in keeping the cloud environment safe. The cloud provider is responsible for safeguarding the cloud infrastructure, while customers are responsible for securing what is inside the cloud, including applications, configurations, and data.
How Shared Responsibility Varies Across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS
From a general perspective, the idea behind the shared responsibility model is quite easy to understand: you, the cloud customer, safeguard resources you can control in the cloud, while the cloud service providers (CSPs) deal with the rest. However, this approach can differ depending on the cloud service category (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS) involved. Let’s get right into it and discover how they are different.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): You are primarily responsible for security here. The provider gives you the necessary tools (server, storage), but how you configure your setup and secure your data and app is totally up to you.
Platform as a Service (PaaS): In PaaS, the cloud providers do more work. They secure the infrastructure and platform while you keep your app safe and decide who can use it.
Software as a Service (SaaS): Here, almost everything, down to the software itself, is handled by the CSPs. The only thing you need to do is to control who has access to what and ensure users have the proper permissions.
What happens when you misunderstand shared responsibility?
Misunderstanding the shared responsibility model can result in errors that can jeopardize the security of your cloud environment and business. Your team can make various mistakes when they don’t know their responsibilities. Here are common errors:
- Leaving S3 Buckets Public: Some startups mistakenly publicise their cloud storage (like Amazon S3). As a result, anyone on the internet can see their sensitive data, such as customer information and company secrets. Although exposing S3 buckets can be a simple mistake, it causes vast security breaches. It is crucial to restrict access to only authorized individuals.
- Using Default Passwords or Admin Access for All Users: Many startups make the mistake of not changing default passwords or giving all their users admin access to the cloud system. This is totally unsafe. Default passwords are a hacker’s dream because they are very easy to guess, leaving open doors for breaches. Also, giving access to many users can create vulnerabilities.
- Ignoring Configuration Responsibilities: Sometimes, startups assume their providers have secured every aspect of their cloud security and that all protection is in place. However, this is not the case. You must still configure your firewalls, identity access, and encryption settings to secure your cloud environment.
Real consequences caused by these common mistakes:
- An exemplary case is the Capital One breach in 2019. A misconfigured firewall running on Amazon Web Services allowed hackers to steal sensitive information. This theft put the personal data of more than 100 million customers at risk, proving how a small error in security configuration can result in a critical situation.
- Another key example is the Verkada breach in 2021. Hackers managed to gain control of a security system that was supposed to be protected by a ‘super Admin’ account, which had its username and password publicly available. This account provided hackers access to Verkada’s AWS-hosted camera systems. They gained control of over 150,000 security cameras in extremely sensitive areas, including hospitals, prisons, Cloudflare offices, and Tesla factories. They exploited their privileged access to view live and archived footage of private regions and released some clips.
The impact of these mistakes can be severe. Startups may face:
- Data Leaks: Sensitive customer or business information is made public.
- Lawsuits: Companies may face lawsuits by consumers or partners if their data is breached.
- Fines from Regulators: If you break the law on data protection, you have to face penalties from regulators like GDPR and CCPA, which may result in paying fines.
- Loss of Trust: Regaining the trust of customers will be difficult once they lose confidence in your company’s ability to keep their data safe
What Startups Are Responsible For
As a startup, you have a significant role to play in safeguarding your cloud environment, and here is how you can go about it.
1. Team education: Educating your staff on cloud security will go a long way in maintaining the safety of your cloud environment. Make sure everyone is familiar with the shared responsibility model and the part they play in the cloud’s defense. Conduct internal security training sessions on risks, access control, and incident response to mitigate security breaches caused by human error.
2. Data: Encrypt your data to keep it safe from hackers and save backup copies in case something goes wrong.
3. User permissions and identity access management (IAM): Everyone shouldn’t have complete control. Follow the least privilege principle, and give each user the minimum permissions necessary to perform their tasks. It is crucial to regularly audit and adjust permissions as user roles change to avoid overexposing sensitive data and resources.
4. App-level security: Ensure the apps you create or use are secure. Pay attention to the APIs connecting these apps and secure them with strong authentication and encryption. Update software regularly to patch vulnerabilities.
5. Configuring cloud resources: Setting up your cloud is your responsibility. Select the right permissions (such as role-based access) and security settings to make sure nothing is left vulnerable to attack.
6. Monitoring and alerting: Watch out for trouble. You need to recognize anything odd or suspicious and be able to respond immediately if something happens. Always have an incident response plan.
Here’s a quick checklist you can use to stay on track:
Educate your Team.
Encrypt data, protect it, and perform backups.
Restrict administrative privileges and access.
Secure your APIs and ensure your software is current.
Use the appropriate settings for cloud tools and systems.
Monitor and configure notifications for strange behaviour.
Always have an incident response strategy in place.
What Cloud Providers Are Responsible For
When you use a cloud service, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud, the provider has significant responsibilities- but only for certain parts. In simple terms, here is what they manage:
1. Physical security: Providers keep the server running smoothly and secure data centers with sophisticated measures like biometric access, keeping the power on, and 24/7 monitoring. Protecting it from disaster or break-ins.
2. Network infrastructure: They oversee the hardware (servers and storage) and the software that keeps the infrastructure running smoothly.
3. Host OS and hypervisor: Cloud providers manage the operating system and the hypervisor. A hypervisor, also known as the Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM), enables multiple virtual machines to run on a single physical server.
4. Managed services are secure (to an extent): If you use a managed database like Amazon RDS, the provider secures the database. However, they don’t manage your login information; how you protect your passwords and credentials is up to you.
Here’s the vital point you need to remember: “Security of the cloud” is the responsibility of the provider; they secure their systems. “Security in the cloud” is up to you; you’ve got to secure what you have inside their system.
Other Effective Strategies for Cloud Security
You and your cloud provider need to work together on your cloud security. These best practices ensure that you do your part in securing your cloud environment.
1. Use a Zero Trust Approach
Zero Trust Security goes beyond perimeter-based defenses. It assumes no user or device inside or beyond your network can be trusted by default. Every connection must be authenticated. Access rights and identity verification must be confirmed continuously, no matter where the request comes from. Instead of just managing roles and permissions, Zero Trust requires every attempt to be authenticated and segmented to reduce movement within the system. This approach significantly limits the risk of unauthorized access and potential breaches.
2. Leverage the Power of AI for Active Monitoring
As security demand increases, so does the need to monitor cloud environments. Traditional means can be enhanced with AI-powered tools, like real-time threat detection, anomaly identification, predictive analysis, and automated responses. AWS CloudTrail can be merged with AI-powered platforms to offer insights, flag dangerous behaviour, and reduce alert overload. Maintaining AI-driven monitoring allows for proactively managing vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and breaches before they become a problem.
3. Integrate IaC
With Infrastructure as Code (IaC), you can define and manage your components in the cloud, significantly reducing human error. Infrastructure as code automates the process of configuring, deploying, and maintaining infrastructure, ensuring consistency across your cloud environment. IaC tools such as Terraform and AWS CloudFormation enforce secure configurations and help your business scale more efficiently.
4. Use a CASB for Visibility and Control.
By serving as a security boundary between users and cloud applications, Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) provide another layer of security. They offer extensive cloud usage visibility, detect shadowed IT, and implement real-time data protection policies. CASB additionally helps organizations with compliance, supervising user activity, and reducing the risks associated with data leakage through excessive file sharing or suspicious login activity. For new businesses using various cloud services, a CASB enables uniform policy enforcement across devices.
Helpful Tools & Resources for Startups
Here are some tools that can help you get started. The best part is that accessing some of these resources is free of charge.
1. AWS Well-Architected Tool.
With this tool from Amazon Web Services, you can check whether your cloud setup is optimal. It advises you on how to correct common issues and can also improve your security, performance, and cost. Please note that applying recommendations from this tool incurs charges
2. CIS Benchmarks
CIS Benchmarks are trusted guidelines developed by security experts to help secure various systems (e.g, Windows, Linux, Cloud, etc.). Download them for free and follow the steps to harden your setup.
3. ScoutSuite, Prowler, CloudSploit.
These are open-source tools that scan your cloud environment for weak spots. They’re beneficial in finding misconfigurations that hackers can exploit.
4. Compliance Checklists (SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR).
If you struggle to meet security standards or legal requirements, these checklists will help you along the way. They outline the steps you must take to stay compliant and secure customer data.
Staying Secure from the Start
When using cloud services, you need to understand your responsibility. Although cloud providers manage a lot, your team is responsible for critical areas like application security, user access, and data protection.
Security should be part of your foundation; it shouldn’t be an afterthought. Being prepared from the start helps you avoid pricey mistakes and gain customers’ trust.
Take a moment to review your current cloud responsibilities. Are you covering all your bases?
The post The Shared Responsibility Model: What Startups Need to Know About Cloud Security in 2025 appeared first on Datafloq.
