Cloud services are used for many purposes in enterprise environments, from storing data in services like Box, accessing productivity tools through Microsoft 365, and deploying IT infrastructure on Amazon Web Services (AWS). With all these capabilities, cloud services enable organizations to move faster, accelerating their business with more flexible technologies, often at a lower cost. However, using any cloud service comes with cloud data security challenges and risks. The safety of data created in the cloud, sent to the cloud, and transferred from the cloud is always the responsibility of the cloud client. Protecting cloud data requires transparency and control. In the steps below, we’ve laid out a core set of cloud security best practices that can help companies transition to a secure cloud and overcome cloud security challenges.

Phase 1: Understand cloud usage and risk

The first step in cloud security is to consider your current state and assess the risks. Using cloud security solutions that enable cloud monitoring, you can take the following steps:

Step 1: Identify sensitive or controlled data.

The most significant risk area is data loss or theft, resulting in penalties or loss of intellectual property. Data classification engines can classify your data so you can fully measure this risk.

Step 2: Understand how subtle data is accessed and transferred.

Sensitive data can be stored in the cloud, but you must track who can access it and where it goes. View permissions for files and folders in your cloud environment, including access contexts such as user roles, location, and device type.

Step 3: Discover Shadow IT (unknown uses of the cloud).

Most people don’t ask their IT team before ratification up for a cloud storage account or changing a PDF online. Use your network proxy, firewall, or SIEM logs to find out what cloud services exist that you don’t know about, and then assess their risk profile.

Step 4: Audit infrastructure (IaaS) configurations like AWS before Azure.

Your IaaS settings cover many dangerous locations, several of which can create exploitable vulnerabilities if not configured correctly. Start by auditing your identity and access management configurations, network configuration, and encryption.

Step 5: Detect malicious user behavior.

Unwary employees and third-party attackers can exhibit behavior that indicates malicious use of cloud data. User behavior analytics (UBA) can monitor anomalies and reduce internal and external data loss. READ MORE. computeritblog