Cloud Security: High Data Security In The Cloud!

The cloud is enjoying increasing popularity. More and more companies are now placing part of their company activities or their entire on-premise IT infrastructure in the cloud – and thus relocating the most important and very sensitive assets to the Internet. However, to ensure that these do not fall into the wrong hands, they need to record a number of technical and strategic security measures. In our following blog post you will learn why nowadays a comprehensive and sustainable cloud security strategy with effective cloud security solutions seems to be an important part of a layered and deeper defense strategy and how you can gradually maximize your cloud protection.

Simultaneously with the emerging spread of cloud services, the number of cloud-optimized Internet attacks is also increasing. Every fourth company is now affected by cloud-optimized attacks . This is not surprising, because unlike the on-premises IT infrastructure, which secures all sorts of IT systems, endpoints, business applications as well as business data through a few security rings, the lucrative corporate resources in the clouds seem within reach for the benefit of cybercriminals to be.

For this reason, if you say cloud, you should also say cloud security.

Threat Defense in the Clouds!

Cloud security is considered a sub-discipline of internet security. It includes a wide range of differentiated protocols and rules that fully and effectively secures each specific component of a cloud computing environment from cloud-optimized attack techniques, data theft, human faux pas, or even the effects of data or system compromise.

The core of the security ecosystem of cloud security consists of the following categories:

• Identity and access management: Various authentication and authorization methods are used here with the aim of protecting cloud accounts from unauthorized access.
• Threat Prevention, Detection and Response Strategies: This includes security technologies that scan all traffic to identify and block cloud malware and other threats, policies and training that improve user behavior and cloud threat awareness -Intensify risks.
• Micro-segmentation: With micro-segmentation, the data center is divided into various security segments down to the respective workload level. Flexible security policies can then be set to minimize the consequences of cloud attacks.
• Planning for data retention and business continuity: Different technical disaster recovery measures are used here in the event of a data loss. This includes backups, systems for evaluating the validity of backups and extensive data recovery instructions.
• Encryption of business data: Security technologies and tools are used here that allow cloud providers and cloud users to encode business data and decrypt them using a special key.
• Regulatory Compliance: This is where security technologies and policies come into play to help meet regulatory requirements for cloud security and data security.

Security risks in the cloud?

Regardless of the extent to which an operation is already using a cloud service or is currently in the early stages of cloud migration, operating without an appropriate cloud security strategy is likely to lead to serious security problems.

These include, among other things

• incompatible and outdated IT systems or the interruptions in data storage services provided by third parties
• Internal human error threats such as user access control misconfigurations, weak credentials, insecure application programming interfaces
• External cybercriminal threats using cloud-optimized malware, OAuth phishing, and password spraying

However, the biggest security risk in the cloud is the lack of a perimeter. For this reason, it is important to implement an overall cloud security strategy that secures each specific component of the cloud computing architecture.

Cloud security from the start!

Cloud computing is the recipe for success for the “new way of working” in companies.

However, when moving to the cloud, companies should be willing to implement a comprehensive cloud security strategy from day one.

Apart from the security measures and security tools already mentioned above, companies should

• Know what aspects of cloud security they are responsible for.
• Ensure transparency of cloud architecture across the enterprise.
• Understand the cloud architecture in detail to circumvent cloud vulnerabilities due to misconfiguration.
• Use strong access or use a password manager that
• uses a separate password for every cloud-based application and cloud service. The key here is to protect the password manager itself with a strong master password.
• create regulated data backups in order to be able to completely restore the data in the event of data loss.
• Rely on virtual non-public networks instead of public WLANs to access your business data.
• Carry out regulated cloud vulnerability tests and penetration tests with the aim of identifying possible cloud vulnerabilities or exploits.

Because this is the only way they can ensure that both the personal and the legally required security requirements for availability, confidentiality and integrity of business data are also maintained in the cloud.