Cloud computing is becoming increasingly popular among businesses. The rise in remote work has led many businesses to fully embrace the cloud as it allows their team members to collaborate in a shared environment online, no matter where they are in the world. However, some businesses are still reticent about moving their data to the cloud.
In this blog, we look at what the security risks of the cloud are and how you can mitigate them. Hopefully, by the end of reading this you will understand cloud security issues better and feel more confident about implementing the cloud in your business.
Data Security & Data Breaches
The task of securing a public cloud environment falls to the cloud service provider themselves. While no system can ever be 100% secure, public cloud platforms are some of the most protected in the world. Major cloud providers like Microsoft and Amazon deploy vast cybersecurity budgets and teams. Many of their cybersecurity professionals are sourced from the defense and intelligence communities.
However, there is a shared responsibility. All public cloud providers will stipulate in their contracts that the responsibility for securing access to your data in the cloud falls on you. If you fail to secure your login information for your cloud service, anyone with that login could gain access and to your customer data, download, leak, or delete it. Implementing cloud access control measures can help to mitigate the risk of this security threat. These security controls include multi-factor authentication, which you should really be using for all logins across your organization, cloud or otherwise.
Location based access control can also help to prevent unauthorized access and data loss. For example, if all your team members are based in the UK it would make sense to block access attempts from users outside the country.
Our comprehensive cybersecurity packages include cloud computing security measures to protect against the risks of cloud computing.
Lost or Stolen Machines
If team members can access your data and networks in the cloud from anywhere with an internet connection, that makes securing their devices more important than ever. Luckily, technologies like Microsoft Intune allows us to remotely manage our clients’ devices. Corporate devices can be remotely locked and sensitive business data can be remotely wiped from employees’ personal devices. This is also true if you have a rogue ex-employee, with a single click, all their access to your cloud services can be revoked.
Compliance
Another worry for many businesses is the regulatory compliance implications of storing their data in the cloud. Privacy and data protection laws can be strict about how data can be stored or moved, and who is allowed to access it. These concerns can be addressed through a combination of access controls, partitioning data by type and only allowing certain team member access to the data they are permitted to view (rather than letting every team member access every piece of data).
An alternative is not to solely rely on public cloud platforms and instead build your own private or hybrid cloud environment. A private cloud gives you more control and visibility over your data and who is accessing it. This can help your business stay compliant. If you are worried about compliance, it is advised that you contact a legal professional who specializes in data protection legislation.
Lack Of Skills or Knowledge
Many business owners worry that they do not have the expertise to manage a cloud platform efficiently and securely. In the grand scheme of things cloud computing is still a relatively new enterprise technology and even your seasoned in-house IT professionals may not have hands-on experience using a cloud platform. Partnering with a managed IT provider who specializes in managed cloud services can help to address this concern.
At Carden IT Services, we have helped numerous organizations to transition to a cloud environment. As part of our managed cloud services, we help audit your existing data and systems to determine what should be moved to the cloud. We then spearhead the migration process, ensuring all data is transferred over a secure, encrypted channel. From there, our support help desk is on call to assist with any of your cloud queries and you cloud networks are monitored for suspicious activity by our security operations center.
These three concerns are the main factors we hear from customers that are worried about moving to the cloud and some of the ways we have helped address these concerns. If you would like help moving your business to the cloud, or even building your own private cloud network, speak to our team today.
