5 Tips to Reduce Cloud Security Risks

Reduce Cloud Security Risks: In the current age of technology, large and small organizations are shifting towards cloud-based options for data storage, remote cooperation, file sharing, and much more. With the popularity of remote work, increased cloud computing to store, access, and transfer resources come with cloud security risks.

Consistently securing their cloud-based systems and applications is one of the organizations’ biggest cloud security risks. Security departments are not able to fully control the complexities of this modern multi-cloud cluster. Understanding these cloud security risks and securing remote access is necessary to eliminate them.

cloud security risk

Cloud Security Risks

Organizations started adopting cloud options to modernize their IT systems and have a secure solution for remote network access. This rapid growth began causing problems for many organizations to keep up with scalability, efficiency, and security. Cybersecurity threats like data breaches and phishing attacks are increasing as businesses expand toward remote access. Sensitive business or client data stored in the cloud is susceptible to leaking if proper means of protection are not adopted. Hackers can exploit this data for unfair means, causing significant problems like legal actions for businesses.

The security risk to an organization’s cloud-based systems also includes cloud misconfiguration. It can decrease the efficiency of remote access due to mismanagement of permissions and various access restrictions. API attacks are also prevalent in the database of businesses that rely on cloud-based storage but do not implement proper authentication and authorization policies. The protection of one’s digital identity in this era of high-tech cyber crimes is questionable. Identity theft is increasing rapidly, and cloud security systems are among its targets. Hari Ravichandran founded the cybersecurity company Aura after he was a victim of identity theft. In remote work, accessing cloud services from public sources without proper protection can result in DDoS attacks, credit card thefts, and numerous identity crimes.

Tips to Reduce Cloud Security Risks

Understanding these cloud security risks and implementing practices to reduce them will make your business more secure during remote work. Here are five tips that will minimize cloud security risks.

Implement Proper Access Management Controls

Proper access management only allows individuals with adequate permissions to access cloud data, networks, devices, or applications. Access management controls can help protect cloud data from being accessed by unauthorized users.

This also makes it easy to backtrack a data breach to its source as it limits access codes. There are several ways you can manage these controls:

  • Identity and access management:

This framework defines how the cloud’s system identifies users and their roles. This framework guarantees that all individuals accessing the cloud are appropriately authenticated and authorized.

  • Role-Based Access Control:

These controls restrict cloud network access depending on a person’s role within the business. Factors such as responsibility, job competency, and authority significantly define a user’s level of access.

  • Zero Trust:

This is the most strict form of access control compared to the other two discussed above. This access management model requires rigorous identity verification by all users trying to access the cloud and continuously verifies the user, device identity, and user privileges.

Adopt a Security System

A robust security system ensures that potential threats to your cloud security are avoided or easily identified before any damage can be caused. Such a security system includes:

  • Real-time Traffic monitoring:

Constantly monitoring activity on access networks is the best way to prevent cloud-based threats. A proper monitoring system enables service providers to inspect traffic that attempts to access the cloud network and its resources. Adopting a Monitoring system provides access to intrusion detection & response measures and vulnerability scanning and removal.

  • Encryption:

Encryptions are a way to add an extra layer of security to your cloud data storage. They encode data before storing or transferring it into or out of the cloud. In the wake of a security breach, even if cybercriminals can gain access to the stored data before proper actions are taken, strong encryptions ensure that they cannot decrypt the data, thus protecting sensitive information.

Risk Management

One of the main reasons organizations move towards cloud services is their security and risk management. Risk management is an ongoing process that helps cloud service providers to prepare for risks and their adverse outcomes.

The first step of risk management is to conduct an impact analysis and categorize the information that the system processed, stored, and transmitted during the examination. This allows the selection of baseline controls and the development of a security plan depending on the identified vulnerabilities that risk compromising system security. Implementing, accessing, and re-defining these security plans is an ongoing process of risk management and minimizing any security threats.

Multi-Factor Authentication

A data breach can result in data theft, loss or damage. Only using a set of credentials like a username or password is an unsafe approach to cloud security as stolen credentials can allow malicious third parties to access all the sensitive business information easily. Multi-factor authentication ensures that only an authorized user can access the cloud data. It is one of the easiest to implement yet effective ways to secure access to your cloud data. MFA adds an extra layer of protection to user accounts. Upon entering their account credentials, identity verification is required in the form of a code sent to their mobile phone, a fingerprint scan, or a one-time password.

Have a Secure Data Backup Plan

Data corruption due to a system error, malware, or a cyber security attack can damage the protection of your cloud service. Not having data backed up can compromise business operations and workflow. Having a secure backup plan and distributing data across multiple locations helps improve data protection and threat recovery. Loop Backup Cloud to Cloud backup plan will help you to restore any data. They also provide a money-back recovery guarantee option.

In the wake of a cyberattack, sensitive data can be corrupted and damaged. Establishing a data backup beforehand is a great way to reduce cloud security risks to preserve the privacy and integrity of your client’s cloud data.

Conclusion

When it comes to cloud security, businesses must undertake proper measures to ensure that their client’s data, resources, and applications are safe in their cloud. Implementing proper access management and multifactor authentication is a great way to stop third parties from accessing your cloud system. A cloud system with real-time monitoring and risk management can help you catch vulnerabilities and malicious users before any damage occurs. Even with all these security measures, it is always better to have a secure backup to ensure that data corruption or damage does not halt workflow.

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