The cloud is more important to the day-to-day operations of organizations across the spectrum of public and private sectors. As remote and hybrid workforces have become the norm, ensuring that your team members can access the data necessary to effectively do their jobs is an absolute requirement.
That also means that cloud data security strategies are more important than ever. Data protection regulations vary from country to country (and even from state to state in the USA), so it is imperative that your strategy is agile enough to remain in compliance no matter where you are operating.
Your data protection policies also go a long way toward making your customer base feel safe trusting you with their sensitive information. Data breaches can be massive inconveniences for people as well as a potential source of significant stress and financial loss from identity theft.
So what do you need to do in order to keep the data you store in the cloud safe? Here are some key strategies you can utilize to shore up the data security of your cloud.
While every organization and every industry has different security requirements, there are several strategies that apply across the board. These security protocols can go a long way toward ensuring your cloud security is as tight as possible.
Role-based access control (RBAC) is one of the most common and effective means by which cloud governance is maintained. The idea is that, based on a user’s role within an organization, certain data is accessible and certain data remains blocked off.
In order to keep this cloud data security strategy operating as intended, it is important to conduct frequent analyses of what roles require access to what data. As an organization grows and changes, so too do the tasks required of your workforce — so having a regular audit of access requirements is a must.
This will also ensure that you are able to identify and close the access of employees that have moved on to other opportunities. Leaving access to your cloud open to a dead account is a recipe for a data breach. Up-to-date RBAC keeps your data safe and sound.
One of the best user authentication strategies, ABAC focuses on the device and network from which the cloud is being accessed. The strength of ABAC is that it prevents access from anywhere or any device that is not already recognized and registered into your system.
The main drawback is that it limits some remote work options since a person’s internet connection may not have all the necessary security protocols that your authentication strategy demands. It also means that your team members need to be proactive whenever they get new devices that they plan to use for work so that they don’t accidentally lock themselves out.
A great tool for Identity and Access Management (AIM) is multi-factor authentication. By requiring identification verification from more than one place, it becomes far more difficult for bad actors to gain access through a single cloned device.
MFA can mean confirming a log-in via a text message sent to your verified mobile device or even using a biometric identification tool. The key is building a secure method of redundancy that will thwart unauthorized access to your cloud.
Along these same lines, it is important for your employees to maintain proper password hygiene. Requiring frequent password changes — even incorporating the use of one-time passwords — makes it difficult for people using keyloggers or other password stealing tools to gain access.
Encrypting data is invaluable to secure file sharing and data storage in the cloud. Encrypting your data essentially means that it is encoded and only those users with verified access will have the ability to read that coded information.
Encryption is specifically relevant when data is either at rest or in transit. Data encryption methods for information at rest protect your stored content. It ensures that, if someone does gain access to your cloud data repositories, they won’t be able to use anything that they find there because they don’t have the key to break the code.
For data in transit, a multi-key system is used. There is the key that allows the data to be read while at rest, but when it is going from one user to another, an added layer of encryption is added that can only be decoded by the receiver, who then also has the key to the normal encryption code.
You can also implement endpoint protection by utilizing an end-to-end encryption tool that allows clients on the receiving end of information to encrypt that data on their end. It’s an added layer of protection, which can make all the difference.
While those core strategies form the basic building blocks of cloud security frameworks, they alone are not enough to truly secure your cloud. To achieve that goal, you need to adopt strategies that can adapt and change as technology advances — both for you and for those that want to steal your data.
With a zero trust framework, users are required to update their authentication credentials frequently to verify that they are authorized to view and utilize the data in your cloud. This framework will combine ABAC protocols to identify devices as well as MFA and RBAC strategies.
Utilizing a zero trust framework requires a strong audit logging and monitoring system that can identify out of the ordinary activity as well as access requests for data that a user would not otherwise have access to.
Whether it comes from an outside figure infiltrating your systems or physical damage to your servers, you need to have data loss protection built into your processes. That can mean frequent backups get made manually and automatically, disaster recovery planning for your data, or, most commonly, a combination of the two.
You also need to factor in security risk assessment. This should not only look at potential vulnerabilities from the outside, but, as part of your zero trust architecture, take into account the risks posed by current team members. This is not just a one time thing. You should be auditing your risks with regularity.
While focusing on proactive cloud data security strategies is the best thing you can do, you still need to be aware of common pitfalls so that you don’t accidentally steer your organization right into them. Here are a few common mistakes you should avoid
TEAM IM has a long history of supporting partners in conducting their secure digital transformation. The experts at TEAM IM have collective decades of experience creating cloud environments and supporting partners in their security efforts.
When working on establishing a cloud, a focus on user access management and building compliance measures into an ECM goes a long way toward protecting a client. TEAM IM starts there, and then delves further to provide you with the most secure cloud possible.
Experience makes bridging the gap between security strategy and successful implementation easy. And you would be hard-pressed to find more experience than you can get when working alongside TEAM IM.
When it comes to cloud data security strategies, it is important to take action to prevent problems before they occur. That means you need to know how data breaches are likely to happen now and how they may be caused as technology advances and infiltration methods improve.
By working with TEAM IM, you get a partner that brings valuable experience with cloud migrations, establishing security frameworks, recognizing and updating to address new threats, and offering support to resolve any issues that fluster your security team.