According to a report from Gartner, the number of cloud data leaks increased by 80%. These data leaks mainly occur due to incorrect configurations. If you are using cloud services, then you should work on enhancing your security level. There are various simple security controls that you can implement for protecting your cloud data. In this article, we are going to talk about security controls that you can easily implement.

Data Encryption

If you want to protect your cloud data, then you must implement some data encryption policy. However, there is no benefit of encrypting all of your data. If you are encrypting all of your data, then the disadvantages of encryption processes will easily outweigh the benefits. Thus, you should find the data that is stored in your cloud. Also, you should monitor the cloud traffic. After that, you can decide the data that you need to encrypt.

You should also compare the possible monetary losses from data leakage with the costs of implementing these measures. The encryption will affect your system performance. Thus, you should also keep these factors in your mind.

You need to first encrypt all the important data in your systems. After that, you need to store it in your cloud. Thus, you can make multiple backup copies. You should also download these encrypted files on a separate external hard drive.

If you have access to large datasets, then you should use services that can help you in data encryption. These services will help you quickly encrypting all of your data. Attackers can get access to your cloud storage. However, they still can’t access your data if you have encrypted it.

Boxcryptor is one of the most famous data encryption services. It works with most of the cloud storage services like iCloud Drive, Amazon, Box, OneDrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox. There is also a free version available of this tool. However, you need to deal with some limitations.

Infrastructure Monitoring

Attackers can always find some ways to attack your systems. If you want to protect your systems, then you should ensure that the attack can’t spread to other systems. You can achieve this by blocking unauthorized connections between different workflows. Also, your cloud architecture should avoid dangerous connection requests.

There are various infrastructure monitoring tools available in the market. You should check all the people that are connected to your network. Also, you should set rules for your users.

Monitoring tools will help you in getting statistics of every user. It will help you in monitoring different threats and events. There are various services available in the market that will help you in managing your SIEM systems.

These infrastructure monitoring tools can help you in generating executive reports. Executive reports are simply a brief security report for your security managers. They check the number of threats present in your network by reading this document. You will also get access to interactive reports. Thus, you can easily check these reports.

Data Backup

It is not simple to protect all your cloud applications. There are various news stories where cloud providers accidentally removed the virtual machines. Thus, you need access to data backup for protecting your applications from accidental deletions. You can store your data backup in a different cloud provider.

If you are running a small business, then you can copy all the files on an external hard drive. However, you can’t scale up this process with time.

You can’t use this solution for dealing with large applications and files. Businesses are using IaaS-based cloud solutions for dealing with this problem. You can use APIs for developing your backup software. There are various cloud-based backup tools available in the market. These tools will help you in scheduling cloud backups.

There are various benefits of cloud-to-cloud backups. You don’t need to worry about the infrastructure costs. Also, cloud-based backups will offer you greater flexibility. Cloud backup service will ensure that you can easily backup all the important files.

Disaster Recovery Plan

DR plan will help you in protecting your business from data loss. You should work on creating a backup site. Make sure that you have access to backup software. However, the cost of maintaining and creating a backup site will be the same when compared to your main site. You need to increase your entire IT budget by 50% if you want to ensure business continuity. Due to this, most businesses are using DRaaS. You can use cloud services for creating your disaster recovery plan. This will ensure that you don’t need to worry about initial capital expenditures.

Restrict access

You should use a role-based security model for protecting your data from attackers. This model will ensure that only legit users can access your data. Your network will first identify the user and then assign the roles automatically to him.

This model will comply with most of the security policies that you need to follow. RBAC will consider all the data as sensitive data. Your users can’t transfer access rights to other users.

This will help you in dividing your users into different groups. Your network admins will have access to most of your network. However, a normal employee will only have access to limited data. This will ensure that they will focus on doing their work only. If they need access to more data, then they can contact the network admin.

Amazon EC2 is also using RBAC for protecting its users. Azure is also using RBAC for providing access controls to its users. You can use RBAC for granting user permissions. This will help you in managing your virtual networks. Also, you can grant user permissions for managing all resources of a specific resource group.

Conclusion

These are some tips that can help you in protecting your cloud data from attackers. You should implement a DR strategy for protecting your business from downtime. Experienced MSPs like Bleuwire can help you in implementing these cloud security controls. They will also help you in moving your applications and data to the cloud. You don’t need to worry about the complex cloud migration process. It is a good idea to outsource your cloud needs to a good MSP like Bleuwire. If you need more tips regarding cloud security, then you can contact Bleuwire.

Contact us today to learn about Bleuwire™ services and solutions in how we can help your business.