Technological advancement has revolutionized how businesses operate and interact with other brands and customers. One of the major tech breakthroughs is the use of cloud services to manage and store business resources. Continued use of cloud services makes it easier for team members to access your business resources, regardless of the location. This not only streamlines your production line but also encourages collaboration and teamwork, improving your productivity.
However, just like any other data management and storage system, security is still a major concern with cloud services. Any breach may expose your sensitive data to competitors and attackers. It may affect your competitive advantage and public image, reducing sales and revenue. Hence, it’s crucial to ensure you understand how to improve your cloud security, helping safeguard your business’ resources.
The following blog discusses what you need to know about cloud security. You’ll learn what cloud security is, how to improve it, and more. Read on.
What Is Cloud Security?
In simple terms, cloud security is a set of policies, procedures, and technologies that should work together to safeguard your cloud-based data and systems. The policies will keep your data private and safe across the cloud framework, improving the integrity and data recovery of your production line. The responsibility of securing the cloud platform rests on providers and clients, who should work together to ensure a healthy cloud security solution.
Cloud security is composed of different categories. They include data security, legal compliance, access and identity management, data retention, and more. The first step to securing your cloud services is to understand what needs to be protected and the system’s aspects to be managed.
Ways To Improve Your Cloud Security
Improving your cloud security will help protect your cloud-based systems and applications. It will safeguard your business-sensitive data, helping improve your reputation and competitive advantage, hence leading to increased productivity. Improving cloud security isn’t an easy task, especially as a newbie. However, you might consider utilizing the following tips to simplify the process. They include:
- Deploy Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
For many years, businesses have been using traditional methods such as username and password combinations to protect user accounts. However, it’s important to understand that as technology advances, so do cyberattacks both in efficiency and complexity. For this reason, the use of traditional methods may be insufficient to protect user accounts. Once an attacker accesses the user accounts, they can easily log into your cloud platform, affecting its effectiveness.
However, deploying MFA may help protect your cloud platform. This security method requires the user to provide two or more authentications before they access your cloud services. It forms a core component of strong access and identity management. Instead of just asking for the combination of username and password, the MFA will require the user to provide one or more additional information, such as biometric, reducing the chances of a successful data breach.
It’s a highly customizable security solution. You can customize the authentication methods to meet the user’s unique needs as a business. Additionally, MFA is compatible with single sign-on (SSO). It reduces the risk of users reusing their passwords on multiple applications. Also, the users don’t have to create multiple passwords, saving you time and improving productivity.
- Provide Proper Training
It’s another way you can improve the security of your cloud platforms. In most cases, any attack might be from your internal workforce, not necessarily for malicious reasons. A team member might not be equipped with the right skills to handle, manage and store cloud-based resources. Hence, they might expose your cloud environment to attacks, compromising your whole production line.
For this reason, it’s important to ensure your workforce is properly trained to handle and manage your cloud resources. A well-equipped team member will know how to access the resources without exposing them to attackers. Additionally, they’ll know how to respond in case of a breach, helping prevent further damage.
There are several ways you can train your workforce. For instance, you can decide to delegate the responsibility to a team of qualified team members. However, they might not have enough experience and skills, which might affect your training program.
Another option you might consider is to outsource from a reputable provider. Check out capture the flag security training to learn how your team can improve in this area. Outsourcing from a reputable provider may create a sense of accountability, ensuring the task gets done. Additionally, the provider will be more skilled and experienced in providing the training, helping protect your cloud environment.
- Develop A Comprehensive Off-Boarding Process
If an individual with access to cloud services leaves your company, this might compromise your security. For this reason, it’s important to ensure they can’t access your resources, systems, data, customer information, or intellectual properties once they leave your business. It’s a crucial security responsibility that usually gets ignored for days or weeks after someone has left.
Since the team members might have access to different systems and platforms, it’s important to create an efficient off-boarding process that ensures all the access rights for the departing team member are revoked. However, suppose you can’t manage this internally. In that case, you can delegate the responsibility to a reputable provider, who will help you set up the off-boarding process, protecting the resources from departing team members.
- Ensure Compliance
It’s another way you can improve cloud security. Some rules and regulations surround data protection. Failure to comply with these rules may expose your cloud resources to attackers and rivals, compromising your upper hand. Additionally, failure to comply may lead to charges and penalties, affecting your saving margin.
Thanks to technological advancement, you can easily integrate tools that will help you understand and comply with the set rules and regulations. Additionally, proper training will equip the team members with the right skills to ensure they comply with the regulations while managing and handling cloud resources.
Bottom Line
As discussed above, cloud services have become a crucial aspect of modern businesses as it encourages collaboration and teamwork. However, security is still a major issue when it comes to cloud services. For this reason, it’s important to conduct extensive research to identify ways you can employ to improve cloud security, and protecting your business resources.
