IT providers are heavily pushing the benefits of the cloud. They talk about its conveniences, it reduction in cost of ownership and its flexibility. But, they rarely mention the security details that go along with it. That is because if you think about it you are moving your data to a third party. If you put some thought into it that prospect can seem daunting. There have been cloud providers that have been hacked and compromised. That is the reality of dealing with the cloud. But, there still are benefits to using the cloud. And, if you take certain precautions then using it may not be as risky.
This article will detail some of the things you can do in order to lock down your cloud account and make it more secure. You can still get all the benefits of using the cloud while resting easy because it is secure.
One of the most important things you can do is to ask your cloud provider what kind of security policies they have in place. You can typically find them online or do not hesitate to call them. If you are getting a cloud solution through a provider, don’t be afraid to ask them for the information. If they are hesitant about providing it then that would be a red flag.
You want to start by setting permissions carefully. Entitlements are the permissions that people, apps, groups, or roles have to use cloud stuff. CIEM makes sure these permissions are right, so organizations can see who’s doing what, control who can access what, and follow the rules in their cloud setups.
Make sure you know where the physical servers are. The cloud is not a magical place where your data goes. It still resides on hard drives and hardware somewhere. It may not be a good idea to have your data stored in certain countries with reputations for harboring cyber criminals, but that is just me.
Use strong usernames and passwords. You do not want to get lazy when it comes to creating usernames and passwords for cloud accounts. Take your time to set strong credentials that are difficult to guess. The longer the password, the better.
Use encryption where available. This is a last line of defense if the data is stolen. Encryption will garble the data if a hacker does get access to the data. It may seem like a nuisance to do this, but it is good practice to do this for data stored in the cloud.
You should also look into cloud security management. Cloud security posture management is about how secure a company’s cloud setup is. It covers how cloud resources are set up, the rules for who can access what (IAM policies), the standards for keeping data safe, how threats are detected and dealt with, and following the best ways to stay secure.
Another good idea is to encrypt the data as it is transferred to the destination. This will prevent people from intercepting the data on the way to its destination. This will also prevent man in the middle attacks. You should also take into consideration a multi-cloud strategy for attacks. You can find more info here.
The security of your data should be paramount anytime. But, if you are using cloud storage then you need to be even more vigilant. Attacks on data and attempts to steal it will never end. And, cloud providers are prime targets. Therefore, it is imperative to be even more protective of your data if using a cloud provider.
Identity Governance and Administration is a key pillar of IAM (Identity and Access Management) cyber security. IGA helps cloud security by providing a framework for managing the identities and access rights of users and devices across different cloud platforms.