Here are the top 10 cloud security principles for businesses.
Public cloud security remains a major concern for organizations globally with 75% of enterprises significantly worried about cloud security. The chief areas of concern include data loss and leakage (69%), data privacy/confidentiality (66%), and accidental exposure of credentials (44%).
Recent data indicates that on average, a new organization falls victim to ransomware every 10 seconds on a global scale. In this article, we will delve deeper into cloud security and the top principles to adhere to ensure strong organizational cyber security. For more local support and information on this topic, please refer to Cloud Computing Houston.
How Secure Is Cloud Data?
Data stored in the cloud is typically considered safer as the data remains encrypted in the servers of the cloud service provider and access requires the use of a digital key.
Typically, the services provided by cloud service providers proves to be much more secure than enterprise security standards. These companies tend to have some of the best minds in data security and have redundancies built in multiple places in case of emergencies.
No security system is completely immune, and even cloud providers are susceptible to attacks – particularly if enterprise system administrators fail to configure properly. In this article, we will discuss the key cloud security principles you should follow to keep your systems secure.
Top 10 key cloud security principles (your organization should be paying attention to)
1. Secure your data in transit
When data is being transmitted in your organization, you need to ensure that the network through which it travels remains secure from eavesdropping and tampering. This can be achieved through a combination of high-grade encryption and network protection. Working in conjunction, these two techniques can help prevent data compromise.
2. Protecting the data at rest
One of the most effective ways to ensure the protection of enterprise data is through implementing strict access controls and adopting a zero trust policy in your information architecture. This means that only authorized users can access your sensitive information.
Since companies tend to lose the most from accidental disclosure or loss of data, it is imperative for organizations to ensure that the right protocols are in place to secure data irrespective of which storage media is used.
3. Ensure the resilience and availability of your data
Lack of availability of business data at the right time can result in the whole process of business continuity come to a screeching halt when you desperately need things to get back up and running. Needless to say, this also results in a much higher business impact from the incident.
In the case of an attack, incident, or failure, it’s the inbuilt resilience of your security framework that matters the most. Disaster Recovery Houston has more to offer on business continuity and cloud security.
4. Protect your digital assets
There are multiple factors involved in protecting the assets your organization uses most often to store or process the user data.
In order to shield against attempts at seizure, damage, or tampering, IT experts need to pay close attention to equipment disposal, data center security, technical methods and policies in place to protect organizational data at rest and in transit and ensure data availability, resilience, and data sanitization.
5. Securing the data center
Effectively securing cloud services requires organizations to also ensure physical protection against reconfigurations, tampering, unauthorized access, and a slew of cyber-attacks.
Top Cloud Security Services providers always offer physical security as a part of their offerings and even provide attestations and certifications that attest to their capabilities. Failure to implement adequate physical protection measures can result in data alliteration, loss, or disclosure.
6. Sanitizing the data
The process of migrating and provisioning resources can prove to be complicated and even result in unauthorized access to the user data. This is why data sanitization is a crucial part of ensuring data security in the cloud. Failure to do this may result in data retention, inaccessibility, or data loss.
7. Disposing equipment responsibly
Once the official equipment reaches the end of its lifecycle, they need to be disposed of in a manner that does not weaken the integrity of your user data or your organizational security framework.
While responsible recycling of all official equipment may seem like a tall order for little benefit; they actually result in benefits for both integrities of your security architecture and the environment at large.
8. User separation
Effectively implementing user separation into your security strategy contains the impact of compromised or malicious users and does not let it affect the sensitive data of other users. The factors that influence user separation include the location of separation controls, data sharing, and the effectiveness of the separation controls.
9. Defending the operations
In order to stay ahead of attacks aimed at cloud operations, your operation management needs to be highly proactive in identifying, mitigating and preventing attacks. Many people think that operational security is too difficult and time-intensive for anyone to implement other than multinational corporations.
However, you can achieve a pretty robust level of operational security just by smartly managing a few factors such as change management, configuration, proactive monitoring, incident management, and vulnerability management.
10. Governance framework
Finally, organizations also need to implement a strong security governance framework for effective cloud security posture management. Organizations need to make sure of continued technical and physical controls throughout the entire timeframe of the projected security roadmap.
Enterprise Cloud Security can be complex and daunting for organizations just starting out with cloud migration. Storage solutions provider has some of the best local experts on how to secure your data in the cloud.
Summary
If you were looking for guidance on implementing effective cloud security best practices, IT Consulting Houston has a huge database of resources for you to consult. While Network Cloud Security and Data Cloud Security will remain evolving topics for the foreseeable future; organizations need to ensure that their basic security foundations are strong enough to accommodate changes as required and evolve with the technical tools at their disposal.
NOTE: This is a post by Scott Young
About Scott Young:
Scott Young, is the president of PennComp LLC, a Managed IT services Houston company. Being a CPA, Six Sigma Master Blackbelt, Change Management Certified and Myers Briggs Qualified, Scott’s expertise is reflected in PennComp as a leading IT company for computer services and network integration. PennComp utilizes Six Sigma methodologies and practices in their service delivery and offers state-of-the-art monitoring and management tools to their clients. His blog can be found at https://www.penncomp.com/blog/.
