Cloud service security measures ensure your data and all applications are accessible to authorized users, which is essential for the prevention of various kinds of cyberattacks. With cloud service security best practices, you can respond to potential security concerns sooner and more effectively.
So, if you’re hoping to strengthen cloud service security within your organization, here are five best practices to implement.
Complete The CAIQ
The CAIQ, or Census Assessments Initiative Questionnaire, is a survey created by the Cloud Security Alliance. The survey aims to help organizations meet essential cloud service security standards.
Completing the CAIQ won’t take you long because the survey consists entirely of “yes” and “no” questions. So there’s no need to work out the correct answer in a paragraph or even give examples. Moreover, the survey is also free, making it an excellent way to gauge cloud security standards in your organization.
Secure Cloud Access
Even though most cloud providers will have their own ways of safeguarding customer infrastructure, it’s still crucial to secure the organization’s user accounts and any access to essential and sensitive data. Cisco Umbrella provides businesses with high-level protection by employing advanced threat intelligence and comprehensive defense mechanisms against a variety of cybersecurity threats, including malware, ransomware, and phishing attacks. This level of protection is crucial for maintaining the integrity and safety of business operations in the digital landscape.
To reduce the risk of account access compromisation and credential theft, strengthen password management within the organization. Create password policies for the cybersecurity program. In addition, automate password management, store passwords in an encrypted vault, manually rotate passwords, and provide your end-users with one-time passwords where possible.
Manage User Access Privileges Better
It’s often necessary for organizations to provide some employees with extensive access to data and systems so that productivity is possible. Unfortunately, these user accounts will be a primary target for cyberattacks because compromising these accounts makes it easier to access vital cloud infrastructure and then further escalate access privileges.
A practical way to avoid this is to revoke user access privileges and only grant access to specific data and systems each employee needs to perform their job role. Instead of giving extensive access, spend time evaluating privileges by following the principle of least access privileges.
Educate Employees
While you can monitor user activity to reduce the risk of the influence of human factors within your organization, you can also educate employees against phishing to safeguard cloud infrastructure better. Raising employee awareness regarding cybersecurity and the impacts of phishing will significantly reduce the risk of cyberattacks. Beyond this, if you feel there is a need for monitoring of company systems, consider turning to a company offering aws managed security services (or others similar for other cloud networks) so that you have the security side handled for you. This can be beneficial if you work with particularly sensitive information and have the means to justify a full time management service.
Meet IT Compliance Requirements
Cybersecurity compliance with laws, regulations, and standards all aim to safeguard customer data while providing general guidelines to help organizations secure sensitive data more effectively.
In order to meet these requirements, you’ll need to define standards that are relevant to your industry. You can employ a data protection officer to assist with cybersecurity compliance if you aren’t too sure where to get started.
Because the impacts of a cyberattack can be devastating to an organization, with many needing to restructure to recover from financial ruin, it’s essential to implement cybersecurity best practices.
