How can businesses ensure safety in the growing cloud computing environment?

India’s cloud computing market has been witnessing significant growth since 2017, becoming one of the fastest-growing markets in the Asia-Pacific region. As it continues to thrive, more and more Indian businesses are moving from data centers to the cloud in a bid to leverage the flexibility of these services. Almost every business that one can think of is harnessing cloud services for many of their critical business applications to accelerate business growth and competitiveness. As more organizations migrate to public, private, as well as hybrid cloud services, India is all set to become a leader in cloud adoption.

Why are businesses switching to cloud computing environment?

Cloud environments have become the primary location for companies to store their data for several beneficial reasons that include:

1.    Cost Savings

One of the most prominent reasons for businesses to go for cloud adoption is a considerable reduction in IT costs. Switching to cloud computing allows organizations to get cost-effective IT systems that include routers, storage servers, and in-house data storage.

2.    Increased Collaboration

Shifting data to the cloud enables the organization’s employees to access it from various locations and collaborate with their peers online. This has been extremely helpful for businesses as their employees continue to work remotely during the pandemic. By enabling employees to work and share information in real-time, organizations can effectively maintain the quality of work and efficiency of their employees.

3.    Easy Data Recovery

Loss of information can be a major concern for various businesses, but with cloud computing, organizations can ensure that their data is backed up on servers and can be easily accessed by people with credentials. Their data is also well protected from security breaches.

As the hybrid cloud environment continues to expand and evolve, the issue of protecting the organization’s and individual’s data has taken center stage, urging governments and organizations around the world to re-evaluate the security measures in place and identify means to ensure optimal security of information stored on the cloud.

Steps to Improve Security

When organizations migrate data storage to the cloud, they become susceptible to a host of potential threats that may endanger the privacy and security of customers, employees, and the business itself. Thus, the adoption of safe and secure strategies for cloud implementation is of paramount importance for any corporation, whether it has already made the switch to cloud or is planning to migrate.

1.    Effective Identity and Access Management

Given the insider threats to organizational data, it is important to achieve control and properly manage who gets access to what information. It is crucial to use job roles and groups to make an outline of permissions needed for each of them to function properly. Organizations must also implement a system to periodically review these permissions to ensure that all team members are following the protocols and only gaining access to information on a need-to-know and need-to-do basis.

2.    Effective Data Leak Prevention Solution

Cloud providers keep a log of everything that goes on the cloud. Organizations can use these logs to pull the data into the same security information and event management (SIEM) tool that they may be used to analyze their internal logs. SIEM tools can help identify threats that may cut across environments or might be isolated to the chosen server and cause data leaks. There are multiple organizations that use this optimally.

3.    Being Vigilant to Shadow IT

Shadow IT emerges when employees in an organization improvise their work processes through unauthorized practices that sidestep the information governance controls and processes. To overcome this, organizations can identify what motivates such behavior and formulate sound governance and security policies and employ tools to effectively manage information.

4. Sufficient Resources to Manage Information Security

Whenever there is a separation of data and applications, it is often followed by the separation of responsibilities as well, resulting in an overreliance on the cloud provider for security. Instead of relying on cloud providers, businesses can opt for a well-trained internal team that can acquire the right tools to oversee the security of their data on the cloud.

The best practices to ensure organizational cloud security is often based on technologies that are already being used by corporations to protect their on-site data and applications. As the hybrid cloud environment requires hybrid security solutions, organizations can alter these existing technologies to better suit their security needs in the cloud environment.

The article has been written by Ajay Sharma, VP IT, Payments & Operations, Sodexo BRS India