Cloud services allow you to move faster and accelerate your business with agile technology at a lower cost. And today, security and technology go hand in hand, as digital transformation has taken over a large number of organizations, all over the world.
However, using cloud services might bring several challenges to companies and IT teams, especially when it comes to data security. As a result, it is up to each business to keep their data protected at all times in the cloud environment. Nevertheless, this doesn’t have to be a hurdle.
In the wake of a challenging year, things are looking up. And this article will help you explore six of the most popular best practices used for securing a cloud environment today.
Practice 1: Data encryption
Any cloud environment should support data encryption, as storing data in the cloud requires proper protection. Therefore, it’s important to check with your cloud provider to know and understand their policies. Learn their guidelines on how you can best protect your data before even migrating. This will help you better prepare for your cloud journey.
Practice 2: Establish cloud data deletion policies
Whether you plan to migrate to a new cloud provider or switch to an on-premise architecture, or even delete a client’s data when no longer needed, your organization needs to be prepared for data deletion. The easiest way to do this is by establishing policies to safely remove any data from your cloud. Compliance is key in this operation.
Practice 3: Smartly manage access control
Enabling access control will allow you to manage all the users attempting to access your cloud—because you wouldn’t want anyone accessing your data unless they are allowed to access it. So, for example, you can create your policies and set up different access rights for different users.
Identity and Access Management (IAM) enables administrators to authorize who can take action on specific resources. It also gives you full control and visibility to manage your cloud resources, providing a unified view into security policy across the entire organization.
Practice 4: Keep an eye out for security threats
It’s not enough to use traditional security solutions that are focused on defending your system when the attack is happening. Today, organizations need more: and you need to prevent an attack by stopping any threats beforehand. You can monitor your cloud environment and detect any hidden threats that are waiting to happen. This way, you can be proactive and remove them before they have a chance to attack your system.
Practice 5: Perform penetration tests
Usually, a cloud provider allows your IT team to perform penetration tests and look for security gaps that could appear anywhere in your infrastructure. Unfortunately, if the gaps aren’t closed, you risk having threats enter your system. But ensuring a penetration test is performed regularly will solve this issue and maintain your proactivity in your efforts to keep the cloud secure.
Practice 6: Train your employees on security best practices
Lastly, don’t forget to train your employees on cloud security. It is essential that you empower your employees to know and understand how to use your cloud environment and avoid possible misuses due to negligence or lack of knowledge. Cloud security best practices should be part of your training plans to help your employees prevent internal security threats.
Conclusion
Numerous digital transformations are driving companies to adopt more tools and technologies than ever before. In keeping up to date with security policies and best practices, you will need to learn how to maintain safety in the cloud environment, as cybersecurity threats can attack your business at any time. Along with your specific cloud security strategy, knowing the best practices for the safety of your cloud is the first step to securing your system.
