The number of businesses moving their IT infrastructure and apps to the cloud is on the rise in today’s digitally connected society. As to the Australian Parliament, now, 42% of Australian firms are currently using the cloud, while major companies globally want to have 60% of their environment located on servers in the cloud by 2025. Companies can realize the huge financial potential of the cloud—which is expected to reach $3 trillion by 2025—if they are successful in adopting cloud computing.
While the cloud environment offers organizations a number of benefits, such as higher productivity, more efficiency, lower costs, scalability, increased resilience, and innovation, there are also a number of risks related to cloud computing for businesses. Industry insiders also warn that compared to traditional data centers, cloud-based infrastructure is more open to security risks. Deloitte reports that in 2023, ransomware attacks affected 66% of organizations, and 44.7% of the losses were caused by the misuse of valid login credentials.
Here’s where best practices for cloud security management come into play. Protecting your data and cloud operations against loss or theft is known as cloud security management. Additionally, considering the ongoing and growing security risks that organizations face with regard to their data, this is currently a very high priority in the IT sector.
The top 5 cloud security management best practices:
Although cloud service providers value security and make every effort to safeguard your
, the truth is that they lack full understanding or visibility into your complete business. As a result, it is critical that your company own and accept responsibility for cloud security management. However, where do you even begin when creating a solid and successful cloud security management plan and technique?
Conduct regular cloud security assessments and audits:
Businesses are able to identify vulnerabilities and conduct audits to verify compliance with security policies and standards via periodic reviews. Routine ratings might prevent, for instance, Gartner suggests that 99% of security errors would be the fault of the clients. Many purposes, including compliance, risk management, risk evaluation, and performance productivity, all of which contribute to cloud security, can benefit from audits.
Prioritize cloud security tasks:
Make sure you focus on the most important areas first, based on your routine risk assessments. When doing so, make use of other resources, such as managed service providers (MSPs), to obtain more knowledge and support. Maintaining safety and security within your firm requires keeping informed of industry best practices and the most recent guidelines.
Adopt a zero-trust security model:
Assume that there is no trust between devices and users both inside and outside the network, and demand identification from any person attempting to access cloud resources. Make sure to encrypt data as well in order to protect private information from attacks and illegal access. With 82% of IT professionals planning more investment in the model going forward, zero-trust adoption is set to increase due to rising hybrid-remote work, increasing cyber threats, regulatory compliance requirements, declining insider threats, improved visibility, and digital transformation.
Implement strong access control measures and monitoring:
To guarantee that only allowed users can access particular cloud resources, make use of identity and access management (IAM) policies. Use monitoring technologies as well to keep an eye out for errors and security concerns. Real-time notifications will help you react quickly to any possible security incidents. Strong access control and monitoring are advantageous because they limit authorized users’ access to cloud resources and allow for early notice of security threats and defects, therefore increasing overall cloud security.
Build a culture of security awareness:
It is impossible to overstate how important it is to develop a security-conscious culture within the organization given how often human mistake leads to data loss. To encourage a culture of security awareness and best practices, invest in cloud security training and awareness efforts for all staff members. Include everyone, including top executives, in fraud practice as part of a full training scheme, in addition to routine training. Employees who are knowledgeable and watchful can serve as the first line of protection against online attacks.
