How to Protect Your Organization Data in a Multi-Cloud Environment

Cloud technology offers various benefits to enterprises. It has significant cost benefits and it puts the latest applications, tools, and technologies at your fingerprints. These advantages are the main reason for the widespread adoption of cloud technology. The growth is only going to accelerate with time. According to a survey by Gartner, more than 81% of cloud users are working with multiple cloud providers. More than 1/3rd of the enterprises are now considering cloud investment as the top investment priority.

The benefits of using a multi-cloud infrastructure are quite clear in today’s digital world. However, if you are not taking the right precautions, then using a multi-cloud infrastructure can bring new complexities. Your enterprise needs to deal with these complexities to avoid any security pitfall. And, no enterprise wants to suffer the consequences of failing to protect their data. You need to align the activities of development teams, operations and security to maintain your data security and compliance.

Fortunately, you can protect your data by following some best practices. You can use the tips mentioned below to help your enterprise in taking the necessary step for strengthening their data security.

1. Data Inventory

Every day, enterprises are generating new operational, customer and financial data. If your data is stored on-premises, then your security professionals and IT administrators can easily monitor it. But, if you are using the cloud to store your data then you need a strong understanding of what type of data is stored in the cloud. You should also understand what controls are in place to secure your data.

You can create a data inventory in order to achieve this. It will help you in identifying where your backup and primary data are stored. You can also track the frequency of back-ups, access controls, file locations, and file types. This will help your enterprise in monitoring your organization data.

2. Back up your Data Regularly

It doesn’t matter if you are using private or public cloud or which cloud service you are using, you need to back up your data regularly. The data recoverability process is a joint responsibility of your cloud service provider and your enterprises. If you want to maintain your business continuity, then it is very important to back up your data regularly. You can use your data inventory to check the frequency of backup of your data. Your critical data must be backed up more frequently.  You should also check where your backups are located. It will help you in providing geographic diversity. Also, check the trade-off between differential, incremental and full backups to meet your data accessibility needs.

Make sure that your cloud provider understands your regulatory requirements and your business needs. You should ask about their data center policies and make sure that they are aligning with your regulatory requirements. Finally, you must conduct a planned failover to train your employees for a real situation. This will help you in ensuring that your data is always available during a real crisis.

3. Establish compliance-based policies

Considering the pace of deployment in today’s digital world, enterprises need to embrace the policies that embed both security testing and compliance in their software development lifecycle. The best way to achieve this is by selecting a cloud-provider that is capable of providing continuous governance, analytics, and verification during your cloud operation process.

If you want to fully protect your multi-cloud environment, then your compliance, governance, and security are very important for both your hybrid and private clouds. Successful multi-cloud security needs verifying and enforcing critical configurations of cloud-based services. You should also check the vulnerabilities in web application components and application libraries. The security of your cloud infrastructure will depend on the configuration of multiple services across your cloud resources.

4. Choose the Right cloud provider

You must be extra careful before choosing any cloud vendor. Your cloud provider must have good security practices. Make sure to read all the features of their services and their security policies. You must have a full understanding of cloud vendors that you are going to deploy shortly. Your IT and security staff must have a complete understanding of your vendor services. The cloud provider you are choosing must have a good reputation in the market. They must also have a good financial position. This will ensure that they can be your long-term partner. You can also enquire about their data center availability, and about their customer care services.

5. Restrict Devices that can use your cloud applications

Make sure that the users and devices that are accessing your cloud applications have advanced security controls. You have to protect the availability, integrity, and confidentiality of your data at any cost. At the user level, you can use role-based access control to make sure that only some part of your data is accessible to your users. You should also enforce strong password practices for your users. This should be extended to even their USB drives, applications, and mobile devices. Make sure that your employees are not using shadow IT to access your resources.

Conclusion

Cloud computing has changed the digital market. It is very important for your enterprise to move all its applications and data to the cloud. This will be one of the best business decisions you can make for your company. But, you should do proper planning before moving your applications. You should take your time to understand the effects of cloud on your data security, integrity, and availability. Your data is the most important thing for your enterprise. Securing hybrid IT environments is challenging and complex. Thus, you must get in touch with experts working at Bleuwire. They will help you in ensuring that your data is secured in a multi-cloud environment.

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