Having the ability to track data across cloud services is vital to your business’s data protection and cloud security strategies. According to IBM, 45% of breaches occurred in the cloud, with average breach costs reaching $4.24M USD for organizations using private clouds, and $5.02M for organizations in public clouds.
Protecting your company's most valuable asset - its data - is more important than ever before. With our ever-increasing reliance on cloud services, ensuring that sensitive data stored and shared in cloud environments is tracked and protected is vital to maintaining a secure environment.
Seven cloud security processes you can apply now
Here are seven processes you can apply whether you’re starting a cloud security strategy from scratch or updating an existing framework:
01. Monitor your data usage.
This includes keeping track of who has access to what data, as well as monitoring for any suspicious activity or unauthorized access attempts.
02. Keep track of changes made to the data over time.
Data tracking in cloud services will ensure you and your team can quickly identify any potential issues or breaches and remediate issues faster.
03. Set up strong access control measures.
This means ensuring that only authorized users have access to sensitive information, and that all user accounts are properly secured with strong passwords and two-factor authentication (2FA).
04. Consider using encryption technologies.
This includes SSL/TLS or IPSec when transferring confidential information between systems or networks.
05. Use best practices for data migration.
Securely migrate data from one system or platform to another securely by following best practices for secure file transfer protocols (SFTP) and other methods like tokenization or hashing algorithms for file encryption. Make sure you have processes in place for verifying the integrity of transferred files once they arrive at their destination point – this will help prevent malicious actors from tampering with your sensitive information during transit.
06. Protect your company’s stored data.
Robust backup solutions like redundant storage systems and offsite backups on external hard drives are a failsafe in disaster recovery scenarios like hardware failure or natural disasters like floods etc.
07. Consider investing in advanced analytics tools.
These tools can detect anomalies within data sets. This is key when it comes to detecting complex threats like insider attacks on corporate databases.
Don’t overlook data warehouses
Data warehouses provide a centralized repository for data and are often used to make informed decisions. However, with increasing volumes of sensitive information it’s important to ensure data warehouses are properly protected from unauthorized access and misuse.
Fortunately, there are several steps you can take to better protect your data warehouse and keep your sensitive data safe.
Here are three key strategies:
01. Data Discovery:
The first step in securing your data warehouse is to know what sensitive data it contains. This includes customer records, financial information, employee details and any other confidential and proprietary information. Once you’ve run a data discovery scan you can build an inventory and classify data types based on sensitivity levels. Doing so helps you align appropriate security controls based on data types.
02. Access Control:
Implementing access control measures like user authentication or role-based authorization protocols ensures only authorized personnel have access to certain parts of the system or specific types of data sets. Conduct regular audits on user accounts and privileges granted to make sure no one has gained unauthorized access or made changes without permission from higher-level administrators.
03. Data Encryption:
Data encryption is a table stake when it comes to storing sensitive information in databases and file systems. It’s a primary layer of protection against potential breaches or malicious attacks on the system itself. Encrypting files before they enter storage and decrypting them upon retrieval ensures that even if someone were able gain unauthorized access, they won’t be able to view any meaningful content due to the data’s encrypted state at rest.
Contrary to popular belief, your cloud service providers aren’t explicitly responsible for protecting your company’s data. Implementing a pragmatic data security strategy across your company’s cloud services and data warehouses not only gives you better control over cloud-hosted data, but it also supports compliance with privacy and security regulations for handling personal identifiable information (PII).
See how the Cavelo platform can help you discover sensitive data and maintain a data inventory across your cloud services and data warehouses. Check out how the Cavelo platform works and schedule a custom demo today.
