Cloud Security Tips for Businesses

The ultimate responsibility for cloud security lies with you—the business customer that uses a particular cloud provider’s services. It’s vital to keep this responsibility in mind to avoid complacency from depending on the security policies and procedures that your cloud vendor puts in place.

When you store data or run applications in the cloud, your business is essentially renting computing infrastructure from a cloud vendor. You access the infrastructure through either the Internet or a private network connection. A cloud service provider could have watertight security, but if there’s a lapse or error in your own security processes, there’s a good chance you’ll lose data or get hacked.

This article provides actionable tips for safe cloud storage and more robust cloud security for businesses.  Areas covered include encryption, security configurations, account credentials, and replication.

Tips for Safe Cloud Storage

It’s imperative you keep your sensitive business data secure when using cloud services. You need to secure data as it moves to the cloud (data in transit) and when it’s at rest in the cloud.

Safe cloud storage deserves its own section because backing up data to the cloud is one of the most common use cases of cloud services. Furthermore, most of the major cloud security breaches that make news headlines happen in cloud storage services.

Most reputable cloud vendors provide strong storage controls when the data is already in their systems. However, bear in mind that you can still be vulnerable to data breaches to data at rest in the cloud resulting from poor access controls or bad cloud configuration. A number of high-profile cloud security incidents have occurred because of companies leaving entire buckets of sensitive data open and unencrypted.

Two tenets of cloud data security are confidentiality and integrity.

Encryption is the main method used to achieve data confidentiality. Sending unencrypted files across a network or storing data unencrypted is a recipe for a third party to intercept and/or access the data. Encryption changes the data so that only those with access to a secret key can read the data.

Data is less secure when it’s moving, such as when you’re sending information from on-premise systems to cloud storage services. Encryption needs to be enforced for data in transit using secure network protocols and the latest cryptography standards. You also need to manually enable default encryption for data at rest in cloud services like Amazon S3 to avoid costly and embarrassing data breaches.

Data integrity is all about whether you can trust the data. Digital signatures can be used to ensure data integrity. A digital signature is essentially a stamp that verifies the authenticity of information sent over a network. There are several digital signature services, such as SignNow, that can integrate with your cloud workflow and ensure data integrity on cloud systems.

When using public cloud services, which are normally accessed over the Internet, consider switching to a  dedicated VPN network that lets you securely and privately connect your enterprise network directly to the cloud provider’s network.

5 Best Practices for Cloud Security

1. Proper Account Access Controls

Proper account access controls should include disabling or removing unused accounts. Default cloud accounts used for initially provisioning a cloud service should be deactivated because seasoned cybercriminals typically know the usernames for these accounts. If they know the username, they already have 50% of the information needed to log in to the cloud service.

2. Use the Least Privilege Principle

Another cornerstone of prudent account access controls in the cloud is being aware of the risk from employees unintentionally deleting data they shouldn’t have access to. The principle of least privileges only gives each employee access to the data and resources needed to carry out their duties. The point of using the least privilege principle is to avoid incidents in which someone internally to the organization compromises the privacy or integrity of data.

3. Automate Cloud Security

Automation helps your organization become much more efficient in its cloud security. With the number of cloud services used by companies continuing to grow and the environments becoming more complex, it quickly becomes impractical and even dangerous to do everything manually.

Cloud security automation uses scripting and tools to perform repetitive tasks automatically and on-schedule. Using automation frees up resources, enabling security professionals to focus more on proactive defense measures. Examples of cloud security tasks you can automate are:

• Disabling accounts
• Cleaning up security settings for virtual machines
• Setting up alert severity levels for cloud security tools
• Monitoring configuration files to detect user privilege escalations

4. Segregate Duties

Segregating duties in the context of cloud security means dividing the responsibility for sensitive tasks among two or more individuals. The point of segregating duties for such tasks is to implement internal controls that prevent one person from compromising sensitive data or disrupting business-critical applications. For example, don’t have the same person in charge of multiple aspects of your cloud security administration, such as configuring accounts and security alerts.

5. Defend Against Availability Attacks

Data isn’t the only important business asset at risk in the cloud. A number of types of cyber attacks target the availability of critical business applications and operations, such as company websites.

DDoS attacks are the most well-known availability attacks. Subtypes of DDoS attacks include ping of death and ping flood attacks. You should definitely consider using a cloud DDoS protection solution, such as Cloudflare to defend against availability attacks.