Cloud Security Threats: Best Practices and Tools

You might already know the cloud security threats. Cloud security is an essential task because it protects you from losing precious information to leaks, hacks, and system failures. There are several different methods you can use to help protect your cloud information. To help assist you in this process, we have compiled the best practices for protecting your data. 

Each of these data security methods has been carefully tested and has been proven to create an excellent security system.

So if your business is struggling or you are worried about falling victim to hacks, make sure to implement these concepts. Just a few of them include increased visibility, threat prevention, greater security on your data, and understanding just how cloud breaches begin. By grasping all of this information, you provide a buffer for your business data that will keep it safe.

Understanding How Cloud Data is Compromised

There are several different ways that your data can be severely compromised and end up open to hacking. This problem is one that can be hard to gauge because it is so complex in most cases.

However, there are a few different ways that this happens. This compromise of data typically occurs in the following circumstances:

• A data breach
• Weak identity management
• Poor authentication of users
• Unexpected server outage
• Poor maintenance of cloud server security

While it is important to remember that hackers often make up the most dangerous threat to your data, they are far from the only concern. In fact, most data loss in the cloud is due to a server crashing and deleting vital and precious data. Understanding these points is crucial to ensuring you prevent their occurrence.

Data Breaches, security mitigation

Data breaches occur when a hacker breaks into your cloud systems and steals your information. During this instance, they will go past your security system and steal or delete vital data.

This frightening situation can devastate a cloud system and will throw most companies for a loop.

“Security measures are crucial for preventing data breaches, such as installing anti-hacking or anti-malware program and monitoring on your own systems as well as on cloud servers.” (source phoenixnap.com website)

Weak Identity Management

If you have installed weak credentials or cryptographic processes on your cloud system, there is a good chance that a hacker may be able to break into it quite easily. Simply having strong passwords is not enough.

Instead, you need to have a system that identifies a person’s identity completely, including gauging where their computer is located and the purpose of their login to the cloud system. Inadequate authentication falls under this same heading.

Server Loss

When your server collapses on you during a vital time, your cloud information may be jeopardized. There are a few reasons that servers fall. Hackers may infect them with viruses that interrupt their proper operation.

A sudden loss of electricity could cause an unfortunate shutdown. It is also possible that these servers will collapse for no good reason. When this happens, you could very quickly lose vital information. The best protection for this is to backup all of your information on a separate server or a hard drive.

Prevention Planning is Critical

It can be tough for the average business person to handle these problems on their own. It can seem overwhelming to combat hackers and also to install security measures that protect their cloud data. However, that isn’t the case if they hire a professional. Professionals will take careful steps to prevent these problems and ensure they don’t become a major hassle.

That’s why we’ve compiled the following beneficial information for your company. It can be used as a guide to the dangers of losing your cloud data. Implementing each of these methods will not only create a superior security system but keep you from losing data due to a server crash. We recommended using each of them in your facility to prevent partial or even total data loss.

Visibility is Crucial

Your cloud security practices need to be visible and easy for your employees to understand. For example, you need to create a company-wide security system and method that everyone is compliant in using. Creating this kind of unified security front helps ensure that everyone is on the same page with their cloud security challenges.

Talk to your IT about this system to ensure it is running smoothly.

Then, you need to make sure it also follows a strict group of points to protect your cloud data. Each of these points is worth a sub-section. Make sure that your IT department understands each of these points and is ready to implement them.

Using Data Encryption Properly

Your security system should encrypt all of its data in a manner that keeps it safe from hacking. For example, it should always encrypt data that is resting or not currently being used. Some security systems will fail to follow this process because it seems like an expensive luxury. That is simply not the case. Resting data is often at a higher risk of hacking than more active data.

As a result, it is important to take steps to get your cloud data successfully encrypted. There are many ways that you can do this step. Your IT crew should be able to encrypt your data or set up a security system that does it for you. They also need to set up a program that can read this encrypted data and present it to your employees with a minimal delay. That is the toughest part of the whole process, but it can be done successfully.

Accidental or Intentional Human Data Deletion

Your company has likely had some people either leave the company or get fired. Did you take the time to delete their user data from your cloud system? Most people probably didn’t even realize that was a good idea. It’s not just a good idea but an essential one. It can keep people from getting into your data and attacking you.

For example, if you fired a person and forgot to delete their login information, they could potentially get into your system remotely and delete or steal your data.

That problem is easy to avoid by just deleting all their user data and login information. You should also change all other login information for the rest of the company, particularly that associated with your cloud server.

Installing Cloud Security Threats Prevention Methods

The best way to prevent data loss is to eliminate the potential of severe hacks. This process is easier said than done. For example, you will have to find a system that assesses every online download and upload on the cloud. You will also need a security system that can monitor, in real-time, all the changes that are occurring from all of your users.

There are several steps to take here to simplify this process.

First of all, all login locations should be automatically monitored. This action helps you spot if one user suddenly logs in from somewhere else far from their last position.

Secondly, you need to ignore everyday tasks that your system will undergo every day. Only potentially threatening tasks or activities should be flagged as dangerous.

Risk Management to Improving Data Security

We already briefly touched on data encryption above, but there are other ways you can improve your data’s security. For example, tokenization is a method that creates a numeric value for each piece of data and maps this token in a safe vault in your cloud. When this token changes, the data can be considered compromised and safely ignored or treated by your system.

The other nice thing about this process is that the tokens associated with data can be removed in the case of a breach. This act immediately makes it harder for the hacker to access the data using their old token values. The downside to this approach is that it requires a very structured approach to storing your data. With that approach, it can be rather sporadic and difficult to implement.

In Closing: Cloud computing threats and vulnerabilities

A good cloud security threats prevention system should take into account all of these concepts and blend them in a streamlined way. Focusing on just one of them is a mistake because a genuinely unified approach requires taking into account multiple aspects of your security.

For example, merely installing a firewall and anti-virus program is not enough. These programs must also be updated and your employees educated on how to use them properly. And we did not even have time to go into the importance of backing up all of your information.

All in all, the best practices for this cloud security threats process are straightforward to understand and should be easy to implement rather inexpensively. Most business owners should be able to do them on their own with little difficulty.

However, there is a chance you could run into some trouble and need a little help for cloud security threats. Don’t hesitate to contact a professional near you for guidance. They can ensure you meet all of these methods and follow them as precisely as possible to reduce the cloud security threats.