If you don’t already have cloud computing for your data storage, it could be just what your business needs. This service helps you to reduce costs, increase user flexibility, and data agility. Without a doubt, cloud storage is great and offers numerous benefits and new opportunities for your business. However, it comes with its share of security challenges that prevent it from becoming as valuable as it should be for companies. The data stored on the cloud becomes a beacon for people with bad intentions. Here are some of the main challenges of cloud computing security and how to solve them.
1. Lack of visibility
Cloud computing is vulnerable to potential security risks if it lacks visibility and control on all the services. Keeping track of all cloud applications in a big company might be quite a hassle, especially in the first stages of migrating to cloud computing. The applications and cloud assets are hence exposed to the risk of security breaches.
How to solve:
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Deploy an auto-discovery technology that can give you a comprehensive view of all servers, networks, and workloads.
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Use a security tool that is full stack in the provision of accurate information about potential risks.
2. Data Breaches
Cloud computing is the most secure data storage software when compared to other conventional data storage systems. However, as it is in many other technologies, data breaches within the cloud are not a rare thing. Many businesses have at some point experienced data breaches. Such occurrences often result in confidential, sensitive users’ information such as health, financial, trade secrets, or intellectual data becoming available to the wrong people. Some causes of data breach include poor security practices, human errors, or being a victim of a targeted cyberattack.
How to avoid:
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Businesses need to choose a vendor with strong cloud security expertise to overcome this challenge.
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Track employees’ actions that get your data at risk of breaching.
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Conduct annual training to equip your cloud users with the best security practices.
3. Data loss
If your data is not properly backed up, it could be permanently lost. Such a loss can happen if there are accidents, human errors, or acts of nature. It is a devastating occurrence for any business as it means you have to start everything from scratch. Such a problem is especially devastating in the healthcare where any minor mistake could cost a human life. Especially, when we talk about instances of heavy diseases.
How to overcome this challenge:
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Putting a disaster recovery procedure in place.
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Adopt an integrated system that mitigates malicious attacks, Install some built-in applications that protect every network layer to a cloud security solution.
4. Distributed Denial of Services (DDoS/DoS) attacks
DDoS is a common malicious attack where a system is knocked offline by overwhelming traffic. It aims not only at stopping the targeted site from functioning, but also making it inaccessible to the users. It can last temporarily or indefinitely. This occurrence has disastrous effects on an organization such as the loss of revenue as well as reduced customer trust and brand authority.
How to protect your business:
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Complementing with DDoS protection.
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Ensure the traffic to your site is legitimate by examining HTTP requests by use of a behavioral web application firewall.
5. Insufficient access management
Unauthorized entrance to the system is a problem that occurs when an organization uses weak passwords, fails to use multi-factor authentication, or lacks ongoing automated cryptography keys, certificates, and passwords.
How to solve this issue:
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Put a scalable identity access management system that allows only authorized individuals to gain entrance to the system’s data stored in the cloud.
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Ensure your data is properly encrypted at all times to protect it from unauthorized access. You can achieve this by ensuring you are the owner and manager of the data encryption keys.
6. Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs)
This cloud security challenge acts in the same way as a parasite. It infiltrates a target company’s system, establishes itself in the IT infrastructure for an extended period, then adopts the security measures intended to protect the system from it.
How to prevent this from happening:
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Using enterprise infrastructure that reinforces internal security such as firewall, servers, routers, and proxy servers.
7. Insecure APIs
The types of APIs used by customers to manage cloud services are supplied by different cloud vendors. Unfortunately, not all APIs are secure hence exposing private data to breach. According to Ericka Chickowski, poor API Security is one of the leading causes of security breaches that have led to the exposure of sensitive data from big companies to the public.
How to protect your cloud data:
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Ensure the contract between you and your cloud vendors is clear on data recovery and legal implications when the API supplied is insecure.
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The vendor should provide you with detailed information on the security architecture of the APIs.
Conclusion
Even with the many threats to your data stored in it, it is no secret that cloud computing is a valuable asset for any business. This article has highlighted the main security challenges faced by cloud computing that you should have your service provider address before migrating to this revolutionary use of the internet. There is a lot to be cautious about cloud computing before adopting it. Fortunately, solutions to curb these challenges are being developed every day, to make this service the best it can be. With the right service provider, data encryption, and key management techniques, there are many benefits to using cloud computing that outweigh the risks involved.
