What is a common risk of misconfigured cloud storage?

• A. Data exposure can occur due to overly permissive access controls.
• B. Improved data integrity.
• C. Significant performance gains.
• D. No risk.

Answer: (A)

Misconfigurations in cloud storage commonly lead to data exposure when access controls are too permissive. If a bucket or container is publicly accessible or granted broad permissions, unauthorized users can read or modify the data, causing sensitive information to leak. This creates real risks like data breaches, regulatory penalties, financial loss, and damage to trust. The other options describe benefits or no risk, which don’t reflect what happens when permissions aren’t properly restricted. To prevent this, apply least privilege, restrict public access, use explicit, scoped policies tied to authenticated principals, enable encryption at rest and in transit, turn on access logging and monitoring, and routinely audit permissions and configurations.