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Cloud Security Best Practices

Prancer
May 18, 2020

Cloud technology continues to play a vital role in helping businesses grow and innovate. It also supports an increasingly global business world that relies on remote workers and collaborators in different locations. With the cloud, practically all barriers have been removed and companies can tap into new resources without worrying about geography or the limitations of file sharing. Everyone can enjoy access to important applications, documents, and other information. This has significantly accelerated the pace of innovation. At the same time, it has created an environment that requires new security measures. With the right testing and security strategies in place, you can safely take advantage of cloud technology. In this post, we will look at best practices when it comes to testing cloud security so that your business can confidently use the cloud.

Whether you have a public, private, or hybrid cloud, there are steps you need to take to ensure that you have control of the flow of information. In today’s world, it isn’t enough to simply address known threats. Cloud security is an active and dynamic field that should be proactive and work to create better ways to identify and respond to emerging threats. A comprehensive security approach should include:

  • A perimeter defense – This is the most basic level of cloud security and works to prevent malicious parties from infiltrating the cloud. Usually, this relies on existing knowledge of threats.
  • Intrusion detection – It isn’t enough to simply try and prevent security breaches. You also need a system in place that is actively working to detect any abnormalities that may indicate a problem.
  • Incident response strategy – You don’t want to be caught flat-footed and scrambling for a solution when you do detect a security issue. There should be an immediate response strategy in place so that you can react quickly and minimize any damage.

Remember that cloud security isn’t only about prevention. The system’s reaction to issues is also key.

Essentials of Cloud Testing

Once the cloud environment has been tested for functionality, you can move on to security testing. In this stage, you will want to test for:

  1. Multi-Tenancy Capabilities. Multiple users should be able to use the same applications without compromising security.
  2. User authentication. One of the best ways to protect data is with multi-step user verification. This will allow you to choose who gets access to what information and create layers of verification. You will want to continually test to make sure that only authorized users are able to access sensitive data.
  3. Disaster recovery. The cloud should be available at all times. When there is a failure, you want to be able to recover as quickly as possible to both provide consistent customer experience and protect data. This type of testing will help you be prepared so that you don’t suffer any data loss.
  4. Scalability. When the cloud is flexible and scalable, it can respond better to fluctuating workloads and avoid any network failures or outages.

Further security tests will depend on compliance requirements that are specific to your industry. It is your responsibility to stay up-to-date with changes in compliance regulations and adapt your cloud security protocols and testing practices accordingly.

Whether you have a dedicated IT team or not, outsourcing your cloud management and security to a third party can be an effective way to better manage security. This approach will provide your IT professionals with more time to focus on other areas of the business and not get bogged down with compliance and testing issues. If you are interested in exploring this option, contact experts at prancer. We can help you improve security and safely take full advantage of cloud technology.