Environmental Protection: 6 Ways to Stay Safe and Sound in the Cloud

By Galaxia Martin, Solutions Director

Comprehensive security is a gift that keeps giving. The challenge is that the threat landscape keeps changing. Cloud providers still offer valuable protection, but the days of leaving it all to them are long gone; we also have to protect ourselves. Organizations must maintain their own internal plans to restore SharePoint sites, email access, and many other functions in the cloud, without relying on provider intervention or built-in reversion tools.

Successful cloud security comes down to keeping up with tech trends and current events, as well as vetting partners and providers to ensure that you understand the protection they offer and whether your organization is equipped to fill any gaps. This is especially important because hackers sometimes try to exploit your organization’s vulnerabilities to damage others by proxy.

It’s easy to forget how many commonplace parts of your digital day, like Gmail and Microsoft 365, reside in the cloud. Do you regularly check on each of those environments to make sure they stay healthy? Do you know how you would a handle ransomware attack? Do you know what you would do to restore access and/or mitigate damage?

Optimized cloud security has layers, like an onion. Layers of security distribute and mitigate risk. If the outermost layer is breached, the inner layers will still provide protection and give you more time to avoid a full-blown catastrophe. The more layers of security you have, the better equipped your organization is.

Cloud security encompasses the technologies, policies, controls, and services that help protect applications and infrastructure from cyber threats. If you are using any solutions/tools that connect to the cloud, you also need to consider how extending into the cloud impacts their security. Maintaining policies and procedures to fit your entire cloud environment, including SaaS products, is a must.

Some security providers offer to assist by evaluating your cloud environment. Others provide ongoing risk management assessments.

Here are some great ways you can protect your own organization the cloud:

1. Use a Firewall.
2. Incorporate micro-segmentation in your networking design.
3. Adopt a zero-trust governance strategy that grants access only to the specific and limited group of resources that needs it.
4. Maintain granular, policy-based IAM and authentication controls.
5. Enable threat intelligence solutions.
6. Protect your data and all other assets in the cloud with regular patching, monitoring, hardening, compliance.

SDI has helped many clients with cloud security. We have also conducted numerous security-focused gap assessments and cloud environment analyses, which include feedback on the best ways to resolve identified risks. Our assessments help clients plan a strategic and technical approach to best address their cloud security challenges. Contact us today to see what we can do for you.