Cloud computing has been disrupting the world of business from day one of inception. It has been an enormous yet welcome change in how data storage and protection is implemented with modern cloud computing technology in place.
Companies are gradually moving away from traditional business models and are now moving to the cloud. There are tons of advantages when you migrate to the cloud. It speeds up processes, increases efficiency, develops new and advanced skillsets, and reduces high hardware costs. It is said that to implement cloud security, you should always be on guard and assume that there is no security at all.
Data breaches happen every single day. Human error is to blame for most breaches as some administrators would tend to forget turning the notches on for basic security controls. Yes, this could happen even to giant companies like Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, or Microsoft Azure.
Human error is one of the top reasons for major and minor data breaches in the cloud, as administrators forget to turn on basic security controls. It is a human element that can be controlled but somehow can be prone to many errors of judgment. Whether it is Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform, keep these rules in mind to secure your cloud workloads to ensure zero data breach.
Weighing The Gains Vs. Risks
Remember that when you store or migrate data on the cloud, you may be in control, but it would still be owned by a cloud service provider. Cloud security is very important now more than ever because data migration has actually made it a target by many cybercriminals. It has been prone to attack knowing that vital or sensitive corporate data is stored in these cloud servers.
The secret to maintaining the best cloud security advantage is to literally think that you have no security measures at all while, of course, checking on your security status all the time. You can’t put your guard down with cloud computing because there are threats around that are just waiting to attack.
Top Cloud Security Basics And Best Practices From The Experts
It’s an entirely new landscape for businesses. Organizations are now adopting cloud computing and sometimes it would be difficult to know the basics or where to start. These best practices will direct you on the top mechanisms and best practices in line with cloud security.
Focus On Your Role
The level of responsibility or roles for cloud services vary. In this case, IaaS environments differ from that of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers because their applications and data are well-secured and stored properly. There are cloud services that manage applications and configure operating systems while the company or client would be responsible for access control, data management, and identity policies.
In short, the organization would be responsible for data protection and putting security controls on and off. In order to be on top of your cloud servers, you must check with your IaaS providers and proxy rental as to who would be responsible for specific cloud security controls.
Control Individual Access
This is one of the actual struggles or challenges of many organizations – controlling who has access to cloud services. Amazon, as well as other cloud providers, warned enterprises never to disclose or allow access to storage drive contents to anyone who has an internet connection. Basically, only the bastion hosts and load balancers should have internet access.
More so, human error is at play because administrators would make errors of enabling global permissions on cloud servers with 0.0.0.0/0 set in public subnets which leaves the connection accessible and wide open. This allows every machine to freely connect to the cloud servers.
Also, weak credentials, as well as misconfiguration, can compromise the security of your cloud servers. All cloud providers actually offer clients access and identity control tools so you are able to grant certain privileges and access control to people. Additional permissions can also be granted.
Data Protection Is A Must
It is extremely dangerous and irresponsible to leave your cloud data unencrypted. This is a common mistake when administrators aren’t able to place proper security controls to prevent unauthorized access to servers and protect your data.
While you are able to provide keys to cloud service providers, your responsibility should be to control internet data key encryptions. Encryption is very secure and it’s the last security protocol to be breached on earth. In fact, encrypted data would remain unutilized by hackers even if security configuration and all else fails.
Observe Proper Security Hygiene
It is vital to practice strict security hygiene in highly sensitive cloud environments because you are providing different or extra layers of security to cloud data. Having this in place, you’d feel confident that if one security control fails, other security measures would be able to keep your data, applications, and network safe from unauthorized access.
MFA is recommended to be enabled to provide protection on top of your username and password. This makes it even harder for hackers to access your serves. This also restricts access to dashboards, privileged accounts, and specific consoles.
Enhanced Visibility
You should always turn on security monitoring and logging tools as given by cloud providers to check on any breach or attempted hacks into your serves. One example of this is CloudTrail by Amazon designed for AWS environments.
CloudTrail is able to check on the history of API calls, time of calls, the identity of the API caller, response elements, request parameters, and caller’s IP address. This can also be used to perform security analysis, resource management, change tracking, and audits in line with compliance.
Integrate Shift-Level Movement
Enterprises should always be able to monitor or check into all codes that go into the platform before it ever goes live. The shift-left movement is all about integrating security measures right into the early developmental process unlike adding it into the final or end stages.
It’s like a preventive security measure so you can check on any misconfigurations or errors before it aggravates into a potential hazard to your cloud data security. You should always check for potential misconfigurations after several weeks or months because new threats are discovered over time which can wreak havoc on your codes. Consistency is important when monitoring vulnerabilities in your system and this is the only way to stay protected.
Know Your Cloud Infrastructure
Basically, you cannot protect something you don’t know. Protecting your cloud infrastructure is easy if you understand your cloud environment. You should have a complete understanding or overview of your cloud infrastructure so you can detect attacks and misconfigurations right away. You can also remedy risks before it gets out of control.
These multi-cloud environments can be really overwhelming and confusing for every organization to tackle. However, cloud security is very important to master security configurations to ensure no data breaches or attacks happen to your system.
Protecting your cloud servers would entail consistency, knowledge, and understanding of cloud systems and infrastructure, putting security protocols on, and checking on people you give privileged access to. Cloud computing is definitely the technology for the future and every enterprise should adapt or eat dust from the competition.
