Cloud Security: Best Practices for Protecting Your Data

Cloud technology is used by many enterprises across many industries. In fact, by 2025, the public cloud business is expected to be worth more than $800 billion.

Nonetheless, one of the most serious issues for cloud consumers is security.

Because of potential cyber risks such as malware, phishing, and denial of service (DoS) attacks, keeping your cloud environment safe is critical. If your cloud security is insufficient, fraudsters will have an easy time stealing your data. As a result, learning how to safeguard cloud data can assist you in minimizing any dangers.

Moris Media, a top digital marketing agency in India has successfully implemented the best cloud security practices owing to its hybrid model of working and presents to you the benefits of employing a cloud-based system while also making you aware of the security threats.

Why Should You Utilize Cloud-Based Systems?

A cloud-based system processes and stores data that is uploaded to the internet. Companies may use one to monitor how their data is shared and maintained from anywhere.

Since your data is housed on several web servers, the top cloud hosting services, for example, promise better speed and 99.9% uptime for its customers.

A cloud system may assist businesses of any size in growing more rapidly and effectively. Netflix and Zoom are two large organizations that employ cloud services. Both businesses depend on a cloud system for storage.

There are three models for cloud deployment:

The term "public cloud" refers to a cloud-based system controlled by a cloud provider and shared by several clients, such as SaaS (Software-as-a-Service), PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service), and IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) services.

A private cloud is a cloud service that is solely available to one user or enterprise.

When public and private clouds come together, they form Hybrid clouds.

Let's go through the advantages of adopting cloud services for your company or personal requirements in further depth.

Save both money and time:

To utilize cloud services, a company does not need to buy any software or hardware. You may choose from a variety of cloud goods and services, such as Google Cloud Platform, Apple iCloud, or Amazon Web Services, based on your requirements.

Moreover, simple access control rules to cloud resources save a substantial amount of time since cloud users do not need to install any apps or download data. Irrespective of location and time zones, you have unhindered access to all your files.

Enhance Data Security:

As compared to physical servers, storing data on the cloud is safer. To guarantee that your data is always secure, many cloud providers adopt security precautions such as setting up login methods and implementing unique security features. Additionally, a cloud service stores your data on various servers, which means they have data recovery processes and backups in case of an emergency.

Moreover, if you utilize a cloud-based solution, you won't have to be concerned about the physical security of your equipment since your personal or business data will be secure online. Your data will be safe online even if there is a flood or fire.

Excellent Scalability:

A cloud service enables you to simply extend your IT resources, such as increasing bandwidth or cloud storage space, allowing your organization to react effectively and efficiently. As a consequence, while updating your cloud resources, you won't have to worry about time or logistics.

Its flexibility and scalability will allow you to concentrate on your company by lowering the risks associated with in-house maintenance and operational concerns.

Simple Collaboration:

The simplicity of access control in a cloud setting allows team members to interact more effectively. Users may simply see and share information across devices and observe any changes made inside a cloud application. This openness helps to prevent confrontations and misunderstanding.

Moreover, you may create a variety of cloud settings for specialized objectives like as staging, quality assurance, or a demo.

Updates on a regular basis:

Cloud-based systems can automatically update as soon as new versions are published, which speeds up product innovation and provides additional features to end users.

Moreover, DevOps technologies and logging systems linked into cloud environments may aid in the monitoring and identification of production and cloud security vulnerabilities.

What Are the Risks Associated with Utilizing Cloud Services?

While storing data in the cloud satisfies the primary security needs of authentication, authorisation, and identity, cyber dangers still exist, particularly when shifting your data to cloud servers.

The following is a list of the most common hazards while utilizing cloud services.

Misconfiguration:

Misconfiguration of cloud services might result in data breaches. It is the most significant cloud security risk for businesses, as 73% of company operations experience more than 10 misconfiguration errors every day. Often, this occurs owing to a lack of understanding of cloud security measures, as well as inadequate company management and monitoring.

Unauthorized parties, for example, may infiltrate the network if your cloud infrastructure is configured to be readily accessible and shared. As a result, your data may be stolen or modified.

Insider Dangers:

Internal users that have access to sensitive data are frequently the source of security problems. They usually endanger your cloud security accidentally. The majority of these security mishaps are the result of a lack of training and incompetence.

Unexpected network traffic behavior might indicate an inside threat. For example, when a user checks in to the cloud environment after hours, accesses questionable resources, or transfers large amounts of sensitive data.

Attacks on the denial of service:

Since cloud systems rely on internet servers, they are subject to DoS assaults. They may overwhelm the company's cloud network with traffic until the server can no longer manage it. As a consequence of this hacking effort, visitors and administrators will be unable to access an application, service, or network.

Even if DoS assaults do not result in data loss or theft from data centres or other assets, they may be time and money consuming to deal with. These hacks may also have a detrimental impact on corporate operations.

Data Errors:

Despite excellent cloud security, data loss may occur due to a variety of circumstances, including:

User mistakes often arise when a user deletes data by accident or opens an email carrying a virus.

Malicious acts - people may remove or damage your data on purpose.

Overwriting data - SaaS customers face a significant risk of data loss since the program is constantly updating massive data sets. Users may erase new information from old data, resulting in partly overwritten data sets.

APIs that are not secure:

APIs are often used to operate and monitor cloud systems by enabling users to access the cloud service. Although cloud providers are constantly upgrading their APIs, they might still raise cloud security concerns since cloud customers often adopt particular frameworks to make their systems less sensitive to assaults.

For example, if a company begins to provide API access to customers, partners, and employees, the risk of unauthorized access increases since anybody will be able to utilize them to access corporate systems and data.

Breach of Information:

A data breach is a kind of cybercrime that happens when an unauthorized individual accesses sensitive data. This may be harmful to both companies and their customers.

Poor cloud security procedures, such as weak passwords, susceptible systems, and malware, may lead to data breaches. It should be noted that data breaches may sometimes occur on purpose when a user attempts to steal your information.

Facebook was a large firm that suffered a data breach, exposing the personal information of over 500 million users. A misconfiguration in their contact importer was to blame.

Cloud Security: Recommended Practices for Data Protection:

After a discussion of the many dangers and threats that may impact your organization, the best measures to take are to understand how to avoid them and maintain cloud security.

Moris Media experts discuss how to make your data safer in this area.

1. Recognize the Risks and Responsibilities:

To avoid security mishaps, while adopting the best cloud security standards, examine all risks and responsibilities with all workers who have cloud accounts. Also, bear in mind that your cloud provider plays a vital part in making your cloud environment safe.

You should understand what your security team is in charge of and which specific concerns the cloud service provider will tackle.

This paradigm applies to all cloud services, including SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, and on-premises data centres.

Additionally, you must be fully aware of their cloud security procedures, such as two-factor authentication, a backup methodology, who has access to the cloud, and a security incident preventive strategy. It will assist you in ensuring cloud security and compliance. In conclusion, it is vital to choose a reputable service provider that provides safe cloud procedures.

2. Deploy Cloud Security Training for Your Employees:

Users are critical in guaranteeing cloud security since they may access sensitive data from it. Individuals' ability to spot cyber dangers might have an impact on your company's overall cloud security. Hackers will get easier access to the cloud environment if your personnel lack the ability to detect cyber dangers such as phishing emails or malware assaults.

Offering security training to your employees, such as fundamental cloud security knowledge, can lessen your security threats.

Decide on an Endpoint Security Solution:

Since the majority of users will access the cloud through a web browser, it is critical to guarantee your security endpoint. It is common practice to protect end-user devices such as cell phones, laptops, and desktops. This allows you to enhance your frontline defence against hackers. It may, however, be problematic since the more people who utilize cloud services, the more cyber assaults you may face.

A solid password security strategy must be developed and implemented. For example, you might make it a regular requirement for passwords to contain at least 14 characters and compel users to update them every three months.

Also, discuss with your staff what security precautions they may take to increase their computer security, such as installing an antivirus application and locking the computer, and advise them to avoid using public Wi-Fi.

To avoid dangerous actions, utilize internet security tools, a firewall, and intrusion detection software. Endpoint detection and response (EDR) and endpoint protection platforms (EPP) may also help to strengthen your cloud security.

Limit User Access:

To implement this cloud security technique, you must first develop an access control policy. This will assist you in managing users who have access to cloud services. Let users to access to the data and systems that they need, for example.

Businesses must construct well-defined groups based on their distinct functions, with access to just the essential cloud resources. While establishing policies, keep complexity to a minimum.

An identity and access management system that combines multi-factor authentication and user access controls may be used to provide a controlling access solution.

Apply Cyber Security Policies:

Several individuals have been working remotely recently. Despite having security measures, some users utilize the cloud without adhering to operational security guidelines.

You may prevent cloud security issues by educating your employees and enforcing cyber security policies. This will make consumers more accountable for their cloud use. When users get a strange email, for example, they should submit it to a cyber security professional to assess if it is a phishing effort that might jeopardize the company's cloud security.

3. Encrypt Your Information:

The danger of being exposed increases when data is sent over the cloud network. Choose one of the encryption methods to safeguard the data you email, store, or upload. This prevents unauthorized or harmful individuals from reading such data.

To encrypt data, an encryption key is used to convert readable data into unreadable data, or ciphertext. Only users who have decryption keys that match may decode the jumbled ciphertext into readable plaintext.

Encryption keys are classified into two types:

Symmetric encryption encrypts and decrypts data using the same key, making it easy to use.

Asymmetric encryption encrypts data using a public key and decrypts it with a private key.

To avoid data breaches or theft, several cloud service providers provide encryption policies that use end-to-end data protection to and from the cloud. Yet, if you want complete control over your cloud, using your own encryption key before uploading your data is one of the finest practices.

4. Install a Monitoring System:

To detect hidden cyber dangers, you need monitor your cloud environment. Monitoring your cloud infrastructure and network traffic for odd activities, such as distant connections and after-hours access, aids in the assessment of your cloud environment.

You may also utilize cloud monitoring solutions to assist you manage servers. They provide various benefits, including simple installation, continuous monitoring of massive volumes of data from several locations, inspection and reporting capabilities to maintain security compliance, and quick and easy deployment.

To help you apply the best security procedures while monitoring, follow these cloud security guidelines:

Select the KPIs that have an impact on your bottom line. You may choose which actions to monitor.

To eliminate misunderstanding caused by numerous sources, report all of your data on a single platform.

Examine measures such as response times and frequency of usage while observing the user's experience with cloud apps.

Keep track of your cloud service consumption and costs. This will assist you in detecting any illegal activity.

Separate your monitoring data from your cloud apps and services.

Data may be used to automate rules. Whether activity levels rise or fall, adding or deleting servers is the best way to maintain peak performance.

Regularly test your monitoring system. It will assist you in detecting a data breach.

On the other side, since cloud services are frequently utilized across different locations and providers, you must retain their visibility. This configuration may create a blind zone in your cloud environment, reducing its visibility. In such situation, make sure you have a cloud security solution that keeps an eye on the whole ecosystem and assists you in implementing granular access control to decrease security threats.

A cloud access security broker is another tool you may utilize to execute the finest cloud security standards (CASB). This program will assist you in improving cloud security control. It maintains compliances, enforces data security regulations, and executes threat detection and prevention in the cloud environment.

Cloud access security brokers assist you in protecting your data by safeguarding it in the cloud environment. It is one of the most highly recommended tools for your cloud security approach. Microsoft, Netskope, and Bitglass are some of the most prominent CASB providers.

Conclusion:

Using a cloud-based system, whether for personal or corporate purposes, can help you save money, be more secure, and expand your organization to the next level.

Yet, you must think about the safety and security of your cloud system. It is subject to a variety of dangers, including DoS attacks, insider threats, and insecure APIs. Additionally, the majority of cloud security issues emerge when cloud security rules are not implemented.

Let's once again go through the four top practices for cloud security:

Recognize the dangers and duties: Be sure you understand the hazards of adopting a cloud-based system, your obligations, and the responsibilities of your cloud provider.

Train your employees: Educating your employees appropriate practices for cloud security will make them more cautious while utilizing the platforms.

Encrypt your information: Unauthorized people cannot read your data since it is encrypted.

Create a monitoring system: This helps you to better manage what occurs in your cloud environment and to respond quickly and appropriately when faced with a cyber-attack.

Moris Media wishes you all the very best in your endeavour to create a risk-free cloud infrastructure and invites you to connect with our experts in case of any queries.