That feeling when your stomach drops. You get the alert that your cloud account was hacked and data was stolen – all your company's files and customer information are now in cyber criminals' hands. You break out in a cold sweat, thinking about what comes next. Angry customers are demanding answers – costly legal and regulatory problems. Your reputation is taking a significant hit.
Situations like this occur daily as businesses migrate data into the cloud. The promises of lower costs, more effortless scalability and greater efficiency lured you in. But serious questions still linger about cloud security. Sure, your provider touts state-of-the-art cyber defences on their infrastructure. But at the end of the day, you must take responsibility for securing access to your data.
This press release will equip you with key strategies for locking down your cloud from intruders, monitoring for risks and keeping data protected. Think of it as as your security game plan to defend your most valuable digital assets.
What makes you vulnerable in the cloud?
First, what exactly makes data vulnerable in the cloud? Understanding the risks is critical for knowing what to protect against and informing your cloud data security strategy. Here are some of the main threats:
Unfortunately, breaches happen even in the cloud. And they can have devastating consequences, like financial and reputational damage, lawsuits and regulatory penalties. Look no further than recent high-profile breaches of companies like Dropbox and Canva. You need locks on the doors, or it’s only a matter of time...
How secure are the keys to the castle (so to speak)? Weak access controls, compromised credentials and misconfigurations routinely lead to unauthorised access to sensitive cloud data. Like forgetting to lock the doors, it creates openings for attackers.
What if the storage building burns down and you have no other copies of the data? It could be lost forever. Accidental deletion by employees or hardware failures can also cause data loss if adequate backups don’t exist.
Regulations like GDPR and HIPAA may apply to your cloud data, depending on your industry. Falling out of compliance could mean hefty fines or other legal problems.
An important concept with the cloud is shared responsibility between you (the customer) and the provider. Generally, they secure the actual infrastructure while you secure access, data and how resources are configured. But breakdowns with "who’s supposed to do what" can occur... and lead to breaches.
Key strategies for securing your cloud data
Now that you know the significant pitfalls to avoid, let’s talk solutions! Here are key ways to lock down cloud access, protect data and monitor for risks:
Multifactor authentication (MFA)
MFA requires users to provide two or more credentials before being granted access. This typically involves something you know (like a password) plus something you have (such as a code from an authentication mobile app or hardware token). By requiring an additional factor beyond just a password, MFA protects against password guessing, social engineering and other threats related to stolen credentials.
Enable MFA for all cloud admin accounts at a minimum. For extra security, expand MFA across your entire cloud user base. Just be aware that end-user productivity may be slightly impacted, since signing in requires additional steps, such as training users on MFA and how to use authentication apps to minimise frustration.
This concept involves restricting user permissions so that employees only have access to the specific resources, data and capabilities needed to perform their jobs – nothing more. For example, developers may need read-write access to particular databases but should not be able to modify firewall settings.
And HR staff may only need read-only access to some employee data objects. Going through this exercise of carefully evaluating and implementing role-based permissions protects against abusing privileged credentials if they ever get compromised.
Role-based access control (RBAC)
RBAC takes least privilege a step further by allowing you to create permission "roles" that match jobs in your organisation rather than individually assigning permissions to each employee. For instance, you may have an "application developer" role encompassing all the typical access an app dev would need, like writing permissions on dev databases.
This allows you to add or remove employees to and from roles without constantly updating their access. As employees enter, leave or change jobs, you simply update what role they belong to from a centralised user management dashboard. RBAC simplifies permission oversight at scale.
Encryption at rest and in transit
Encrypt data in transit (as it travels over a network) and at rest (when stored on disks) for comprehensive protection against unauthorised access. For data in transit, enable transport layer encryption between cloud services and internal network traffic. For data at rest, leverage cloud-native encryption options for storage objects like block storage volumes and ensure databases also have encryption enabled.
The encryption keys themselves must also be heavily protected from unauthorised access. Securely generate sufficiently long and complex encryption keys. Avoid hardcoded keys that could get exposed in code repos or software builds.
Use cloud provider-integrated key management systems like AWS KMS, Azure Key Vault and Google Cloud KMS, which offer features like access logging, automated key rotation and fine-grained access controls. Back up keys into air-gapped storage as well. Handle encryption keys with the same (or higher) security precautions as you would passwords. After all, whoever holds the keys can unlock everything.
Final word
Approach cloud security in steps – don't try to boil the ocean. Start with enabling multifactor authentication for all administrators to lock the virtual doors. Then, a regular data backup process will be created in an alternate location. Gradually implement more advanced controls around access and configurations from there.
The shared responsibility model can feel like a grey area. But remember, the cloud provider handles the security of the core infrastructure and networking. You just need to control the access points, usage and data flows from there. No security strategy eliminates 100% of the risk. However, you have many techniques to minimise vulnerabilities, respond to incidents swiftly and ensure business continuity if a disaster ever strikes your cloud environment.
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