Cloud: Best Strategy For Cybersecurity

Securing on-premise IT environments has become a must! I must say enterprises have started becoming pretty serious about their doings. In fact, several companies have altered strategies to shift an increasing share of their applications and data to public-cloud infrastructure and platforms. Does the following post emphasize on how businesses can scale up their use of the public cloud?

Although the adoption of the public cloud has been quite limited till date, but that doesn’t mean this will continue in the future. Public cloud, on the contrary, offers more technical flexibility and more straightforward scaling when we look at the broader workloads and implementation scenarios. In fact, the public cloud has the potential to reduce IT operating costs. Due to which well-aware companies are found building new applications and analytics capabilities in the cloud as well as they are seen mitigating workloads and technology stacks onto public cloud platforms.

No matter how this technology has come with a boon; it shares a fair bunch of controversies as well. For instance, the cloud can be considered more secured than on-premises, but that doesn’t mean it is foolproof. Smart hackers have ways of compromising cloud data and running otherwise healthy businesses into the ground. Coming up with a perfect plan can significantly reduce risk as well as chances of you being vulnerable in the long-term.

Developing a robust cloud security strategy

According to Gartner, 95% of the cloud security failures are a pure result of the customer’s fault. Creating a robust security strategy will provide great help when it comes to avoiding common security failures and enjoy the freedoms or perks that come with operating in the cloud. Down below I would like to mention specific pointers that can help you in creating a robust cloud security strategy.

• Involve all key stakeholders- Securing your business in the cloud is more like building the hull of a boat. A single hole- no matter the size; can sink what is otherwise a perfect built ship. In terms of cloud security; a failure to account for all stakeholders and the way how they are involved with your organization. This will lead to a compromised strategy. 
• Identify vulnerabilities- With ignoring the risks, you might not be able to help anyone. Put all vulnerabilities on the table; by doing this, you will be able to create a strategy that accounts for both your strengths and weaknesses.
• Regular training- Cloud is changing continuously. This means the stance on cloud security should be evolving. Simply implementing a cloud security strategy and letting it run its course is not worth doing. In order to stay secure,  make sure that all of your employees are getting regular training.

Top Cybersecurity Strategies to Take Into Account

#1 Think of conditional-based access-

Leveraging cloud resources is a must thing to do; devices should be granted access depending on certain conditions. And if not met, it is very crucial to come up with alternative paths like remediation, limited access or additional security screening. Also, it gives transparency to connecting users. Imagine a situation where an employee connects to a SaaS-based cloud CRM system from their personal iPad while attending a conference. To continue authentication; the device or specific app prompts the user to be managed or have a portion managed to gain adequate access. It is imperative to ensure that the process is seamless and self-service based where only once the access is granted.

#2 Data classification and encryption

Can you name me a thing that can move as fast as light? Think a bit hard! Gave up- its data. The confidential and corporate data is the secret golden nugget where all IT security measures have always sought to protect. Now, what if all corporate data is containerized and encrypted; and data itself comprises of conditional access baked in with metadata. Now the only issue is that data is hard to containerize and encrypt. But for thick 32-bit legacy applications, this proves difficult and requires additional applications to virtualize and cloudify.

As soon as an employee downloads a corporate spreadsheet and then emails it to a personal email account. If the data itself is categorized and has content-level encryption, it doesn’t matter where data ends up! It may also interest you to know that the data can’t move to other systems at all If the cloud file storage is containerized.

#3 Cloud Access Security Brokers

 With more and more organizations leveraging a multi-cloud strategy, connecting multiple clouds together has become the next priority. Tying clouds together has historically been done for several times for ease of authentication and providing common identity with single-sign-on-capabilities. There is no denying in the fact that connectivity is edge-less and everywhere. What they can access is containerized and encrypted; their identity dictates permissions and risks. Today, activities across clouds are visible and controllable by IT and management, govern by the same policies universally.