Cloud strategies have been implemented to varied degrees by businesses of all sizes. While the cloud is advantageous in many ways, it also contains risks that businesses should fully examine before entrusting assets to it.
The transition to hybrid working has been fraught with difficulties. The necessity to implement a cloud solution, which has only grown in importance as a result of the pandemic, is arguably the most significant challenge. Over the last few years, “digital transformation” has become a catchphrase, with SMEs and larger organizations migrating to the cloud. Nonetheless, the pandemic has accelerated the already-existing trend of working remotely.
Businesses rely on cloud computing services for simple access to company data and apps as more employees choose remote work. With an upward trend in reliance on the cloud, its security is becoming more important.
The cloud adoption explosion has actually exacerbated some issues which were not so severe earlier. According to the “2020 Remote Work from Home Cybersecurity Report”, 69% of businesses were concerned about security risks posed by employees. Furthermore, 59% of companies were concerned about employee awareness, 56% about unsafe home Wi-Fi networks, and 43% about unprotected personal gadgets. CISOs understand that the attack surface can grow dramatically as more gadgets connect to numerous networks. Misconfiguration and unpatched issues are the two other key risks.
Also Read: Insider Cybersecurity Threats: 3 Robust Strategies for Mitigation
Fortunately, there are a few best practices to ensure that cloud adoption is as secure as possible. When using a cloud solution, here are the top five best security practices that for businesses can adopt.
Choose a cloud vendor carefully
There are numerous vendors to choose from, and deciding which one is best for the company can be difficult. To ensure that the company selects the most secure cloud provider, they need to first assess if the vendor can guarantee 24/7 data and network availability, and also adequately evaluate a vendor’s compliance with various data compliance standards.
Data should be classified
Securing cloud data should be a top priority for businesses. It’s crucial to determine what data requires the most security. Since extremely sensitive data necessitates the most stringent protection, classifying data according to its importance is a wise strategy to allocate resources to critical data. Given the difficulties of assigning security standards consistently across all data, spending on data classification tools can be essential.
Educate staff
If an organization plans to adopt the cloud, it should educate its employees on existing and new cloud security trends. The advantage is that an organization’s ability to recognize suspicious and even malicious activity will improve. Many businesses ignore this crucial stage, and as a result, they are unable to fully benefit from cloud adoption.
Also Read: How CISOs Can Effectively Assess the Health of Cybersecurity Programs
Data encryption
For the goal of developing security throughout a cloud infrastructure, data encryption is essential. The advantage is that threat actors will not be able to detect vulnerabilities throughout an organization’s cloud infrastructure, thus greatly reducing security breaches in organizations.
When used in combination with other security devices
There are many more security tools in the market that can help organizations improve their security when implementing a cloud solution. An intrusion detection and prevention system is a good example. Here, the system can look for signals of intrusion in the cloud and network and prohibit illegal access. Endpoint security, for example, ensures that severe security policies are properly extended to devices like laptops and mobile phones.
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