Many organizations have been leveraging cloud-based technologies for agility, flexibility, and scalability advantages. Given this context, cloud security is indispensable for all organizations. By implementing cloud security correctly, organizations can ensure business continuity and unlock many opportunities that the cloud environment offers.
What is Cloud Security?
Cloud security is a set of policies, strategies, controls, procedures, and practices designed to safeguard the data, resources, and applications hosted on the cloud. It provides multiple levels of protection within the network infrastructure against data breaches, unauthorized access, DDoS attacks, and so on.
Cloud security is an umbrella term which includes:
- Access control
- Security policy and strategies
- Redundancy
- Datacenter security
- Cloud application security
- Threat prevention, detection, and mitigation
- User security
- Network security
- Regulatory compliance
- Content security and so on.
Important Security Tools and Components
- Cloud WAF is situated on the network perimeter to monitor incoming traffic/ requests before they can reach the server/ business resources. Cloud-based WAF is a critical component of cloud application security.
Leading-edge Firewall solutions provide highly tailored security, designed with surgical accuracy by certified security experts. Firewalls effectively protects against a wide range of existing and emerging threats, including DDoS attacks, bot attacks, and vulnerability exploits.
- Strong identity management and access controls based on the principle of least privilege. These define which users/ user groups get access to what resources/ data.
- Data encryption/ masking for the privacy and security of confidential and sensitive information. This is often a regulatory requirement.
- Dynamic threat intelligence to keep track of the evolving threat landscape.
- Proper configuration of security settings to minimize data exposure and secure vulnerabilities arising from security misconfigurations.
- Incidence response plans include regular data backup, user education, and so on, to enable the organization to recover quickly from a security incident/ natural disaster.
Main Risks Associated with Cloud Computing Security
The main objective of cloud computing security is to minimize the risks that organizations facing continuously and ensure business continuity even in the face of an attack.
- Data breach and IP theft/ loss
- Identity theft
- Unauthorized access to mission-critical assets
- Malware infections
- DDoS attacks
- Compliance violence, regulatory actions, and legal costs
- Loss of control over actions of end-users
- Financial damage and revenue losses
- Breach of trust of stakeholders (customers/ partners/ employees, etc.) and diminished reputation