4 Security Considerations When Moving to the Cloud
The cloud is a vital technology for your business in 2024. With so many benefits in performance, cost, and security, the cloud is really turning out to be the future of the business landscape. But, while the cloud has many advantages when it comes to security, there are also a lot of considerations when moving to the cloud.Â
As with any migration strategy, maintaining high standards of security is vital to ensure the process of moving to the cloud is successful. Making sure you don’t slip up could be the difference between having a robust and all-encompassing security or creating vulnerabilities that could put your organisation at risk.
In this article, Extech Cloud outlines four different security considerations when moving to the cloud, and how to get started with ensuring your business has a great security strategy today.
Implementing Robust Encryption ProtocolsÂ
While cloud services have robust security for storing your data, transferring your data is a different story. During transference, your data is vulnerable and will need to be protected.
Encryption is the best solution for this. It scrambles all your data and makes it inaccessible without the key to decipher it, meaning that anyone who manages to get your data during transit will not be able to access your data. It’s another layer of security that ensures important data isn’t snatched during the migration process.
On top of this, encryption is still useful in the long-term. It stops your data from being accessed in the case of a successful breach into your organisation, as the data will still be encrypted and inaccessible.
Moreover, many data protection and compliance regulations require you to use encryption to ensure sensitive information and data is stored securely. This means that if you haven’t already, you need to start looking at encryption and using it within your organisation, including for post-migration to the cloud.
Strengthening Access Control MechanismsÂ
Even if your security protects you from direct attacks, social engineering and other access-based attacks are still a danger. After all, if someone bypasses your access control mechanisms, they’ll gain access to your whole organisation.
To prevent this, you must strengthen data access protocol to ensure they are strong enough to stop breaches and attacks. This means using robust tools that have options for multi-factor authentication and allow you to implement zero-trust access control policies.
Tools like Microsoft Entra ID work as an identity management system, to manage who has access to your system and facilitate processes, such as single sign-on and multi-factor authentication, to keep unauthorised personnel away from your data.
Establishing a Continuous Monitoring SystemÂ
In the modern world, you need to be proactive when dealing with threats to your organisation. Otherwise, you risk failing to catch newer threats that could be too fast or too far under the radar to react to.
A continuous monitoring system is an all-encompassing proactive approach to raise data security and keep your business secure. This will let you identify smaller problems too and prevent those issues from becoming threats down the line.
By using a continuous monitoring system to protect your organisation, you also give yourself more efficiency and faster response times. You can use the monitoring system to track system performance within your company and use that information to make the whole process more efficient and effective.
Ultimately, using a continuous monitoring system will let you create a centralised system that can take care of all monitoring within your business and provides a central point to manage threats.
Correct Decommissioning On-Premises ServersÂ
When migrating to the cloud, you’ll need to decommission your organisation’s on-premises server hardware to ensure it’s removed from your system correctly. However, doing this correctly is vital, as failing to do so could create gaps in your security posture.
The first thing to do is plan your decommissioning strategy and create a list of things to do. Here are the steps you should take to decommission:
- Data Backup: Data backup is vital to ensure your data is safe, in case of issues during transit.
- Data Transfer: This is the process where data is transferred from on-prem system to the cloud.
- Software Removal: Uninstall all applications and services running on the server, to ensure that all software is uninstalled correctly and without any issues.
- Account Removal: Remove all user accounts securely. By not doing so, you can risk credentials being accessible on the hardware and causing problems in the future.
- Data Wipe and Disconnect: Wipe data from the drive, power down, and disconnect. This will ensure you don’t leave any data on your system that could be extracted and used in the future, as well as letting you disconnect your hardware from the system.
By following these steps and making sure you work with a trusted provider, you can ensure your cloud migration goes smoothly.
How We Can HelpÂ
Cloud migration is essential in the high-tech work environment but is a process that requires a lot of forethought. There is a multitude of steps that you need to consider to ensure the migration process goes as smoothly as possible.
If you’re looking to get started with cloud migration but don’t know where to begin, or you simply just require assistance along the way, reach out to Extech Cloud today. Our experts will provide you with a helping hand so that your cloud migration goes smoothly and successfully.
Get in touch with us now and see how we can help.
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