80% of businesses experience at least one serious cloud security incident (like malware attack and data breaches or leaks) per year on average, Venture Beat reports. Although cloud computing certainly improves productivity and accessibility, the larger attack surface opens the door to new security risks, including data breaches that cost businesses $4.5 million on average. That’s why it’s so important your business has security strategies in place to keep your cloud network hacker-proof. By implementing a Defense in Depth strategy, encrypting your data, and devising an incident response plan, you can successfully reduce your risk profile and protect your business.
Follow a Defense in Depth strategy
A Defense in Depth strategy uses multiple security measures (like strong passwords, multi-factor authentication, and data encryption) to block cybersecurity risks. So, rather than a hacker only having to break through one security measure, there’s numerous in place to detect and prevent the attack. So, encourage staff to use complex passwords with numbers, special characters, and upper and lower-case letters. Around 35% of data breaches are caused by weak passwords, so this is something that can be easily avoided.
Also, use password vaults to securely store passwords. With this tool, your employees only have to remember one password for work, rather than multiple. Vaults also send alerts when passwords are weak or reused, as well as automatically regularly rotate (change) strong passwords to keep privileged users secure.
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Encrypt your data
Only 17% of small businesses encrypt their data, while 53% have over 1,000 unencrypted sensitive folders, Small Biz Trends reveals. Indeed, encryption can seem complicated or “too techy” for most business owners to want to bother with, but it plays a crucial role in company-wide data security. When your data isn’t encrypted, it can easily be read and stolen by hackers, potentially without you even realizing. Data encryption, on the other hand, keeps your data private. It basically converts sensitive company information into an encoded format that can only be read (de-encrypted) by people with the correct encryption key.
Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) typically do provide encryption solutions as standard, but it also pays to implement further measures to keep you fully protected. For instance, Bring Your Own Encryption lets you encrypt and retain complete control over your own data and encryption keys (rather than it remaining in the hands of your CSP). Managing your own encryption keys also lets you see who is accessing company data and when. This can help you better identify security threats and block them before they have the chance to do any damage.
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Devise a incident response plan
An incident response plan can minimize the harm caused by breaches when they do happen, so your business recovers quickly. Overall, your plan should determine the root cause of the breach, its consequences for your business, and action-steps to rectify the situation. To create your plan, first decide on who should be part of your response team (like IT technicians, for example), their responsibilities, and when they should be contacted following a breach. You also need to have procedures in place to detect and collect data on security breaches. Answer questions like: when did the incident happen? Who discovered it and how? What’s the extent of its impact? What’s the root cause?
Your plan should then work to contain the breach to prevent it spreading. For instance, disconnect compromised devices from the internet, and have a redundant backup in place. A redundant backup involves storing copies of your data on different systems or devices, so you can therefore avoid permanent data loss and excessive downtime when a breach does happen.
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Eliminate the breach
Lastly, it’s time to eliminate the root cause of the breach. So, remove any malware present and update your software to bolster your cloud environment against threats. You need to do a thorough job here as if even the smallest amount of malware or malicious software remains, your data will still be vulnerable. If in doubt, call a professional cybersecurity expert for help.
Don’t leave cloud computing security an afterthought. By implementing Defense in Depth strategy, encrypting data, and devising an incident response plan, you’ll minimize your risk profile and keep security breaches at bay.
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