How Will the Metaverse Affect Cloud Security?

An immersive digital world enabled by a range of technologies, including the internet of things (IoT), blockchain, and virtual and augmented reality, the metaverse allows us to see and interact with objects and people. This virtual environment is enhanced by photorealistic avatars that can reproduce your real body through wearable sensors that measure your movements and immersive smart glasses that enable virtual and augmented reality. With these technologies, what you do in the real world controls your experience in the virtual world and vice versa.

Supporting a virtual universe requires vast computing and storage resources. These resources are readily available in the cloud. This predicted uptake of cloud services should lead to purpose-built cloud technologies purpose-built to serve the needs of the metaverse.

As the cloud forms the basis of the metaverse, in what ways will the metaverse affect cloud security?

Top Metaverse security concerns

For a virtual world to operate like the physical world, it must sustain continuous online availability with real-time feedback and continuous operation. High-scale interactions are supported by high-speed information transmission and computing systems. The ideal compute infrastructure for the metaverse supports low latency and big data flows.

Technologies such as cloud computing, 5G, IoT, edge computing, and high-performance computing are ideal for supporting metaverse computing and processing requirements. Adopting these technologies in the metaverse will require more devices connected to the cloud and an increase in cloud infrastructure. Looking at this expansion from a security perspective, an increase in endpoints connected to the cloud will undoubtedly lead to an overall increase in the exposed attack surface.

For example, IoT devices are highly targeted vulnerability points for attackers. This is because they commonly contain weak security controls and portability—a recipe for infiltrating multiple networks. IoT botnets are not uncommon occurrences, which might be replicated in the metaverse. Attackers target botnets as they allow them to automatically distribute malware, slow down compute power by mining for cryptocurrency,…