How to Protect Your Organization’s Cloud Data From a Cyber Attack

Most modern businesses require some form of storage to maintain their critical data. While traditional on-premises servers have been quite popular, maintaining server security and ensuring high performance throughout is quite a hectic task.

On top of that, on-premises servers are quite expensive, which doesn’t suit startups. On the other hand, cloud storage solutions have continually grown over the last few years. So as cloud computing becomes more common, it will enable more businesses to join the cloud, leaving behind on-premises servers.

Data security has a critically high position among the more common cloud computing risks. Hence, enterprises need to ensure that there are no cloud security risks.

So, in this post, we will talk about how you can ensure contextualized cloud security for your business.

Types of Cloud Computing Security Risks

Your cloud data is prone to various cyberattacks. Some of the common types of cyberattacks include:

1. Phishing

Phishing scams, text messages, and emails are often used to acquire information. Generally, people use fake official outlooks to ask for critical business information. You may often get a webpage link asking for sensitive information, which is later stolen by cybercriminals.

2. Malware

The SQL attacks trick your webapp to inject malicious code into your database. Such drive-by attacks can induce virus-containing code in your system, which then captures your sensitive data and transmits it into the wrong hands.

3. Denial of Service

Server attacks, such as Denial of Service, are also common. DoS or Distributed DoS uses virus infected computers to make unwanted traffic requests to overload the web server, and make the service unavailable.

4. Unencrypted Messages

Cyber attackers can tap into your business data containing unencrypted messages, passwords, or emails. They also conduct social engineering to guess passwords and enter them inside your cloud database.

Things to Ensure to Protect Your Business Security for Cloud Storage

Here are a few must-do practices to avoid cloud security risks for your business.

Invest in Contextualized Computing Service

The cloud service should be equipped with high-security features, like AI-backed algorithms, and contextualization, etc. With contextualized computing security, it’s possible for computing devices to collect data from their surroundings in all possible contexts.

Cybercriminals collect information like location, orientation, and other contextual details all the time. So, as a business owner, you would never want such contextual information to get into the wrong hands.

That’s where you need a contextualized cloud security service. The contextualized computing offered by Lightspin would be ideal for businesses using generically configured VPNs that have a higher security risk.

Create a Local Backup

Regardless of which enterprise cloud service you might use, creating a local backup of your sensitive business data is always a good idea. It’s a precautionary measure that can potentially save your business in the possible case of a cyberattack.

A backup ensures that even if cyber criminals encrypt your data (like ransomware), they cannot erase it. Hence, you can prevent critical data loss. Since your organization relies heavily on your cloud data, not having a local backup is a serious security risk that must be avoided at any cost. Otherwise, it can lead to severe financial and legal consequences for business owners.

Be Careful While Storing Sensitive Information on Cloud

Services, such as Microsoft or Google also offer cloud security, but you need to exercise caution. If the information is highly sensitive, better opt for local disks, simply because it adds an extra layer of protection. Moreover, keep multiple backups of the info.

Cyber criminals can often find a way to sneak through. Major security breaches have occurred even at top IT companies like Microsoft, Facebook, and others. So, you never know what could happen to your sensitive business information. Hence, it’s a good idea to avoid storing critical data on the cloud to avoid any troubles in the future.

Use an Outsourced IT Security Service

It’s possible that you don’t have a large IT staff, so it’s better to use external IT services for your cloud security. This is a great option for startups and small businesses.

By outsourcing your IT security services, you won’t need to worry about data security, and you can always get expert services to handle your cloud data.

Use Encryption Techniques

Encryption is a good way to avoid misusing your data even if cyber attackers get hold of it. Local encryption ensures an additional protective security layer. Interestingly, encryption also encapsulates your data from administrators and service providers, so it’s quite a safe option for your cloud security.

Therefore, choosing a service provider with encryption services is important. So, to test your cloud service, test some of your files with encryption to ensure it works.

Make Security Assessments in Your Firm

Frequent assessment of your company’s cloud security can help you prevent any security vulnerabilities in your cloud storage. In addition, with timely risk assessment, you can comprehensively test malicious websites, folders, and drives and identify possible data breaches and loopholes in your network security.

As a result, it can prevent any serious attacks on your business data and will always help you strengthen your cloud storage security for your business.

Train Your Employees

Ensuring cyber security is a collective effort. Hence, you cannot expect to secure data alone. Instead, it’s a collective effort, and it involves your staff and other workers too. Train your employees about the value of securing cloud data.

Emphasize how they can contribute to data security. Moreover, regular data security training and online security courses can be a great way to spread awareness.

Add Two-Factor Authentication for Login Systems

Two-factor authentication (a href="/2fa">2FA) provides added security when users log in to different systems and accounts. For instance, consider the security code generation for app users and ecommerce services.

These apps generate a security code to verify the user. Likewise, you can generate security codes for your business apps so that when a person tries to log in, it’s certain that no one else is trying to sign in.

Ensure Secure Passwords

Predictable passwords are easy to crack. Hence, ensure that all your business passwords are discrete and that there is no correlation between two different passwords. Combining a hard-to-guess password with two-way authentication becomes a powerful combo that uplifts your security measures.

Now, you can use different techniques to generate highly secure passwords, making it virtually impossible for any hacker to get in.

Regular Security Tests

Employ some hackers to crack into your cloud security to identify loopholes. It’s a good practice that ensures higher security measures in any organization.

Moreover, hackers are quite smart in picking any vulnerabilities, so they can advise you on preferred cloud security services that can prevent such breaches in the future.