With hackers making headlines on a regular basis, you may be questioning your recent decisions to move data storage to the cloud. Your on-site system may not be the most efficient solution, but you felt comfortable that your data was safe behind your firewalls. How can you be sure that cloud providers are just as diligent as you are in protecting the data of your enterprise?
It’s essential to look at each provider’s backup policies to decide which best fits your needs. Each cloud provider includes a page on their website for describing the tools they have in place for securing your data in the cloud, with the priority of promoting security transparency. Here are a few of the features you’ll be looking for in your provider:
Encryption: Your cloud provider should offer encryption on at least three basic levels: going to and coming from the cloud, and while data is at rest in the cloud. They should provide a relatively detailed description of how your data is secure and why you should trust that it is. The providers will explain their encryption methods that prevent hackers from reading your data without the proper key. The provider holds the key.
If you’d like another layer of protection for your data, you can add a safeguard by encrypting your data prior to backing it up. For this backup, only you would hold the key, providing double protection for your data.
Upgrade to VPN: Many providers offer a virtual private network (VPN) as an added security measure. Acting as a sort of armored truck for your data as it travels through the ether, this option will increase your costs for cloud services. You’ll either pay for minutes of VPN connection or the provider will set up a virtual private cloud account that is segmented off from the public cloud. You can opt to set up your own VPN, but this can escalate costs further because now you have a VPN to manage.
While VPN is an option, its inclusion in this list is not meant to imply that the cloud is not a safe option for data storage unless you purchase additional security measures. Cloud providers employ several layers of security protection.
Access management: It’s important to consider the firewalls in place by the provider, but some of the most critical security measures for protecting data in the cloud are those from within the organization. Identity and access management utilize a set of policies that use authentication in a variety of ways to ensure that only those that require sensitive information to do their jobs can access it. This might include several levels of password authentication, as well as a personal security question and management granting only minimal access privilege so that the most sensitive data is available to the least possible number of individuals in the enterprise.
Security is just one of the concerns you may have about choosing the right cloud provider. Contact us at Cloud Source for more information about the considerations you should include in your search for the right cloud solution.