The Top 5 Cybersecurity Tactics for Protecting the Cloud

Cybercrime damage is predicted to hit $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, with over 90% of organizations using the cloud in some way.

Online Safety And Security

The global cybercrime damage is predicted to hit $10.5 trillion annually by 2025. Even more, as many organizations and companies are embracing cloud computing (a 2016 survey by resume help suggests that 95% of respondents are already using the cloud), we should expect serious cloud security breaches that can bring more damages to organizations.

In this article, we’re going to discuss top five cloud security tips for protecting data.

Prioritize End-to-End Security Monitoring

Even though installing a powerful antivirus program and adding stringent internal security processes can help to prevent a company from cyber-attacks and security breaches, organizations need to go the extra mile. Businesses and organizations need to focus more on end-to-end security monitoring by implementing the following elements:

  • A powerful cyber threat intelligence.
  • A complete security monitoring technology.
  • A technological stack that can help to detect and contain activities.

Automate Incident Reporting and Responses

Organizations should have automated systems that can detect and solve incidents automatically. Organizations also need to fully integrate the root-cause analysis with the security monitoring system. This will help to speed up the analysis and response to incidents. Note that automated incident detection and response should go hand in hand with focusing on end-to-end security monitoring. Remember to enhance visibility and efficiency to accelerate incidence response.

Everything in One Place

Consolidation of all your cloud detection and prevention tools is another powerful cyber security tactic to protect the cloud. Remember that cloud security is not only tricky and more challenging than on-premises security, but is also more complex. With cloud security, you have a ton of perimeters that include your cloud computing services, employees, data storage, and other applications operating in the cloud.

Even though different cloud providers have their own security services, there are more than enough third-party vendors providing cloud security solutions to support cloud-vendor solutions. Having more solutions could make the whole cloud security infrastructure more complex. As a rule, organizations should have adopted cloud security solutions that come with a broad range of features, as opposed to having multiple solutions with narrower capabilities.

Visibility

When it comes to protecting the cloud, visibility is everything. After all, how possible is it to secure the unseen? Having too many resources running on multiple public and private clouds can hinder visibility. Have a cloud security solution that enables broad visibility to all your environments, and take advantage of artificial intelligence and machine learning to respond and act to incidences at the right time.

Keep Records of All Assets in the Cloud

The last thing you want to see is a disaster happening when you even don’t know what kind of data is secured in the cloud. Organizations need to keep accurate records of every single asset they have in the cloud, and the vulnerability those assets have.

Additional cybersecurity tactics:

  • Stay informed about the latest threats. The Mitre ATT&CK framework is a useful resource where organizations can track threats. Organizations can also get remediation recommendations and emerging insight into how attackers operate. Threat intelligence feeds can also keep organizations informed about emerging threats. Another way to stay informed is to participate in security organizations like ISACA or follow renowned cybersecurity groups.
  • Have a data backup plan. Having too many assets in the cloud increases the chances of permanent data loss. The last thing you want to see is a disastrous data loss when you don’t have a backup. Have a security solution that enables your organization to have consistent data protection policies across multiple cloud services.
  • Establish access control to manage risk. This is where the “who has access to what data” policy becomes useful. Where you store your data is important. However, knowing who accesses it is also important. Organizations should implement access control measures that state who accesses what data, who does what with it, or what they are trying to access. To achieve this organizations should have tier user identities to back-end directories as well as for external identities.
  • Create powerful cloud encryption. This is also another important cloud protection tactic.  Cloud encryption is when the data and text is transformed using encryption algorithms and are then added to a storage cloud. Find out from your provider about how data is managed. You should also encrypt data at the network's end to ensure maximum protection before it leaves your organization. This also helps to ensure the transfer of data in the cloud is secured. Don’t forget to save the keys that encrypt and decipher your information. This will help to ensure that even if the information transferred is stored at a third-party provider, the person using the data must request access from you.
  • Choose passwords wisely. Since you’ll need to encrypt files with passwords, you should be cautious with your password. Multiple studies suggest that most of the world’s popular passwords can be cracked in under a second. Besides, even though passwords containing at least eight characters, a number, and mixed uppercase and lowercase alphanumeric symbols were believed to be strong, they can be cracked easily these days due to the rise of advanced hardware and software. As a rule, IT managers should create distinct, original passwords that aren’t easy to guess and hack.
  • A risk-based approach to vulnerability management. For many years, IT managers have paid attention to zero days vulnerabilities and simple vulnerable scanning systems. This is perhaps caused by comparing the threat perception versus the reality of the threat. Even though zero-days vulnerabilities are vital metrics, they aren’t the most burning issue for most organizations. Implementing a risk-based approach to vulnerability management can help organizations identify areas of real threats. This approach involves evaluation and prioritization of threats based on how easily they can be exploited and adapted against an organizations’ IT system.
  • Zero trust security. Organizations should trust no one in everything they do. This involves the devices, networks, and data they use, as well as the people and workloads they have. Organizations must set security perimeters around each of these assets and only give access based on limited permission and privilege levels to employees and applications.

In today’s post-pandemic world where everyone is moving to the cloud, you need to have measures that ensure your organization’s data is secure. The reality is that there are many cybersecurity tactics that can help to protect the cloud. In fact, what we’ve talked about here could be just the basic tactics for most organizations. The last mistake organizations can make is to wait for a disaster to hit to take action. Take action now. Use these cybersecurity tactics to safeguard the cloud and minimize the cost of cybercrime damage.

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