Organizations’ failure to properly manage the servers they lease from cloud service providers can allow attackers to receive private data, as research my colleagues and I conducted has shown.

Cloud computing allows businesses to lease servers the same way they lease office space. It’s easier for companies to build and maintain mobile apps and websites when they don’t have to worry about owning and managing servers. But this way of hosting services raises security concerns.

Each cloud server has a unique IP address that allows users to connect online and send data. After an organization no longer needs this address, it’s given to another customer of the service provider, perhaps one with malicious intent. IP addresses change hands as often as every 30 minutes as organizations change the services they use.

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