In this blog post, let us learn how secure cloud data is. Are you one of those who prefer to save documents, photos, videos, and reports on your computer’s hard drive? It is becoming widespread as most people like to keep their files in the Cloud. It is a storage space located on servers hosted by third-party providers, not on computers.
There are many benefits to storing your data and essential files in the Cloud. Saving your data there helps to keep it safe even if your laptop, tablet, or smartphone crashes, and it still allows you to access the data to your files.
However, you may have a few concerns about cloud computing, like data protection, security threats, and potential data loss. In this case, hackers can access all your videos, photos, and reports and break into your cloud provider’s servers. Besides, the service provider can crash all data like images of your summer vacations, videos of your children’s elementary school graduation, and others. But How Secure Cloud Data is?
After saving files, images, and videos in the Cloud, you will get more security than keeping them on your devices. Most cloud companies depend on more robust cybersecurity, offering protection to your sensitive data.
What is the Cloud?
The Cloud is a software service that runs on the internet, and it is not available on your computer or devices. Therefore, when you save your files, images, and videos to the services, these are stored on third-party servers and companies, including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.
As a result, you can access the files when you use a device connected to the internet. If you have saved your details already from the recent trip to the beach, even you do not need to wait until you use your device again to access them. Just log in onto the internet from your laptop or PC anywhere to get them available.
A few famous cloud service providers are available, like Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure. In addition, you can see Hulu, Dropbox, Gmail, and Office 365, in the software, which is not available on your mobile.
What is Cloud Security?
It is the process and technology that helps protect the cloud computing environments against external and insider cybersecurity threats. Nowadays,
Cloud computing has become a must for governments and businesses as it helps to boost innovation and collaboration. Besides, it works as the delivery of IT services over the internet.
In this case, Cloud security and security management best practices are helpful because these prevent unauthorized users from accessing your details. Thus, it helps to keep your data secured from current and emerging cybersecurity threats.
How Secure Cloud Data is?
Want to know How Secure Cloud Data is? It is common to wonder How Secure Cloud Data is if your important files are safe while saving them in the cloud infrastructure. The reason is that your images, files, and videos are not under your control while these are on servers. Therefore, you may think about how vulnerable the servers are to hackers or cyber thieves.
The data you have saved to the cloud service providers is safer than the details stored on the hard drive PC. However, you have to remember a thing hackers use phishing emails and malware to get details stored on the devices.
They are capable of even freezing your computer as well as your files. Moreover, large companies undertake more protected and robust security measures than what you have on your laptops, pc, and computers. So now, you will know How Secure Cloud Data is.
Why is Cloud Security So Robust?
You need to know that cloud servers are located in datacenters that most users can’t access. Besides, the files on cloud servers are encrypted, indicating that these are scrambled, making it difficult for cybercriminals to access. Cloud providers usually use fee security features to secure your data.
Consistent security updates:
These updates generally take the help of tools designed to save your devices from the latest viruses or malware. The companies should continuously update the security measures while users store the data in the Cloud. There is nothing to worry about forgetting to run an update because the service provider will keep the security measures updated daily.
AI tools and auto-patching:
Cloud providers have started using artificial intelligence or AI to protect your data in recent times. The reason is that it is not so simple to find experienced security professionals to oversee data.
However, they still turn to artificial intelligence to tackle the first level of security analysis minimum. These depend on default algorithms to seek out and detect possible vulnerabilities in security measures.
Built-in firewalls:
The service providers depend on Firewalls also when it comes to keeping the files protected. This technology works as a wall to keep the data safe. Both hardware and software-based firewalls apply rules to all traffic coming into a network.
The rules help filter out suspicious traffic and keep your data behind the wall. As a result, it becomes harder for hackers to slip viruses or malware past the security measures.
Redundancy (ultra-backed-up data):
Sometimes, your service provider can suffer from a natural disaster or large-scale outage result of which your hardware can fail. What will you do then?
In most cases, the large cloud providers practice redundancy, indicating that they can copy the data several times and store it in different data centers. Thus, you can get your files from a backup server when one server goes down.
Third-party security testing:
Your service provider needs to hire outside security companies to test the servers and software daily to ensure that these are safe from hackers, cybercriminals, and viruses.
What Precautions Can You Take to Increase Security?
If you want to store the essential files in the Cloud, you have to undergo a few steps to increase the security of the data.
Encrypt your data:
Your first task is to ensure that you have sent the files to a service provider who can encrypt your data. Hence, you must want to make the process very difficult for hackers to get at your data.
You should store your files with such providers depending on encryption. It is simple for them to steal data that hasn’t been scrambled.
Perform data backups:
Ensure that you take the help of only those service providers to back up your data. Besides, don’t store files and pictures on one server only because you can not access the data when the server goes offline.
You can back up your sensitive data in your external hard drives despite saving it in the Cloud. Thus, you can get an additional layer of protection occurred with your cloud provider.
Enable two-factor authentication:
Activate two-factor authentication to make the job more difficult for hackers. The two-factor authentication can offer you two pieces of data while logging onto a site.
Suppose you are signing onto the bank’s online site. In this case, your first task is to give your username and password. After that, wait for a while until the bank sends a code to your email address or phone.
When you get the code, enter it online to access your accounts. The additional step makes it harder for hackers to get at the emails, personal data, or financial data.
Can the Cloud computing Company Access the Data It Stores?
The service providers contain the digital key to the encryption to help them process a user’s data, like indexing the data for future searches.
But a fee service providers allow users to access the key to their data despite the government’s objection that they may require access for national security purposes or law enforcement.
Do Governments Have Access to Encrypted Data Now?
When the data is encrypted, it helps to protect it from criminals, hackers, and malicious governments. But hackers and criminals may use encryption to hide their illegal works. Earlier, law enforcement and intelligence agencies have taken the help of court orders to access data from phone and Internet companies.
But a service provider can not offer a key to the government agencies if it does not hold the key to the encrypted data. Therefore, intelligence agencies and law enforcement want a way to ensure that they can access data while required anytime.
Critical Components to Improving Cloud Data Protection:
Clouds help to cover different IT needs through virtualization of hosting storage, computation power, and work-related collaboration software. However, these depend on the security levels.
Besides, reliability depends on how these get connected to the company’s data center and the encryption methods used during data transfers. So, if you want to have improved cloud data protection, first, you need to know how it can work, the vulnerabilities they have, how you can handle these, and more.
How Can You Provide More Security to Protect Data in the Cloud?
There are a few vital components of cloud data security you must keep in the eye.
- If it is the geographical distance, you must select the service provider which has data centers near you and lets you choose where you store the data. Thus, you can get better business continuity, performance, trust, and legal security benefits. That is why you can restrict in nations where their government doesn’t take data regulations seriously.
- Test your provider’s connection type, gateway, and firewall services if you are willing to do so. In addition, you can check the encryption technologies for data-at-rest and in-transit.
Besides, you may find keywords such as AES encryption, SSL/TLS handshake, strict authentication and authorization methods, separation of roles, need-to-know basis, and HTTPS.
- Whether you are willing to keep the data protected, ensure that you should have end-to-end encryption (E2EE). Using E2EE lets, you relax as your data remains highly protected even if a security breach happens.
How Does Cloud-Based Security Work?
The security services’ objective is always to keep users’ data safe. Therefore, vendors offer encryption to restrict unwarranted access, which can provide different access controls and ensure data security. In addition, you can get extra data recovery and backup options if there is any data loss.
In transit and at rest encryption:
If you are willing to implement data protection, you need to direct the data traffic to the security cloud, filtered before reaching the application system.
In this case, cloud storage vendors use the TLS protocol to keep your files protected from eavesdropping. And it takes the help of the cypher, authentication, and key exchange to secure a connection.
The data becomes decrypted when it gets out of this secure channel. It means that hackers or rogue employees can access the data while it comes to the provider’s server. Thus, you can ensure How Secure Cloud Data is.
However, sometimes, your provider might want to re-encrypt your data before storing it on the disk, and the process is known as at-rest encryption. The service provider holds the encryption keys to the files for which those who try to access the keys can decrypt your files.
Client-side encryption:
Different encryption algorithms range from the old DES to the newer AES. These generally use complex algorithms to keep the data protected and concealed.
Besides, the Cloud-based vendors use these to adjust the data identity. In addition, they help by limiting access from an unrecognized application trying to access the encrypted files. So it makes you sure How Secure Cloud Data is.
AES is one of the best, and it is probably the best modern secure encryption algorithm. It can offer different levels of security depending on the key length, including 128, 192, or 256 bits. However, you must go with 256-bit as it is the most secure one in the market.
In most cases, the cloud providers merely take the encryption’s help. But the client-side encryption is capable of giving you a guarantee of the confidentiality of your files.
Files you upload to the software never get decrypted on the provider’s servers because of the absence of encryption keys. As a result, hackers cannot decrypt your files despite accessing them on the provider’s servers.
Zero-Knowledge Authentication:
It doesn’t allow others to read and view your data. When you use this type of authentication, it offers you a key access password.
Therefore, the provider cannot store encryption keys or user passwords in unencrypted or unhashed form. As a result, it assures you that no one is capable of getting access to your content.
However, it also has a drawback: losing the password will never get back to you. The reason is that the service provider cannot reset it for you. In this case, the best thing you can do is use a password manager.
Ensure that you have made a strong password you can remember. A few cloud storage providers adopt zero-knowledge authentication methods as security measures.
Content Control:
With the help of cloud storage vendors, you can share data with others. In this case, you need to make links to folders or files or send a collaboration invitation to others. The storage software enables you to share while restricting and controlling your shared content.
Several methods are there through which you can control your content. Hence, your job is to implement the folder permissions expiry dates, such as password-protected links.
Ransomware Protection:
If you encounter a ransomware attack, it can cause significant business harm. Hackers generate this type of malware to find your sensitive data and encrypt them.
If you see this type of malware attack, you will be asked to provide a ransom for the key, helping hackers to decrypt the files. In this case, you should work with those storage vendors who can give ransomware protection services or perform properly against such attacks.
In most cases, these vendors provide versioning solutions to fight ransomware. But the solution is different for every storage vendor. For instance, you can get unlimited versioning from a few vendors, but most offer 15 or 30 days. Thus, you get to know how Secure Cloud Data is.
Cloud Storage Security Challenges:
How Secure Cloud Data is? When it comes to the question of How Secure Cloud Data is, to should know that there are many challenges. While it offers you benefits, moving data to the Cloud exposes your files to new risks. We have given here all the common risks and concerns. These let you know How Secure Cloud Data is.
Operational Risks:
In most cases, security failures occur from an operational mistake made on the client’s side. These common mistakes are as follows:
- Employees use unapproved storage software without knowing about the security or IT team.
- Lose an encryption key for poor key management.
- Remove valuable data accidentally.
- Employees use unsecured devices.
- Transfer files to the wrong person.
Data Availability Concerns:
You can experience Operational risks on the service provider’s side. These are as follows:
- A server failure can cause Service. Besides, it can happen due to a mistake of a staff member.
- Besides, a local disaster, including a power outage, fire, earthquake, and more, can cause a hardware failure.
- In addition, a successful cyberattack can target the service provider directly or take the help of another cloud user.
If anything affects the storage provider, it will impact access to your data directly. Therefore, you need to wait till the service provider is not fixing the problem. Sometimes, your team may not access cloud-based data until the vendor’s team helps to resolve the issue.
More Data Exposure:
A considerable portion of data security ensures that only team members can access the data. However, if you depend on a partner to store files, you can boost the attack surface through which a malicious actor might come close to your data.
You should take appropriate precautions to ensure that no team member leaks the data. But your service provider can expose the files accidentally, and as a result, you have to experience data leakage.
Regulatory and Compliance Obligations:
Compliance demands rely on how a business stores data and where it does. Therefore, the storage software must meet all relevant needs. These include:
- Store and process data
- Control access to files
- Segment the storage
- Delete data
- Keep data safe
Your service provider should fulfill current requirements and allow your business to adapt to new demands and regulations.
Misconfiguration Issues:
Your data may be exposed to Cloud misconfiguration. It has become a significant issue because the end-users have decreased visibility and control over data and operations.
These misconfigurations typically result from:
- Poor resource and operation policies.
- Inexperienced engineers.
- IT mistakes.
A misconfiguration might cause a data breach from an insider threat or an external actor.
Inconsistent Security Controls:
You can face the issue of Conflicting and overly complex security controls. Generally, the client’s and provider’s teams often set up inconsistent rules for which the problem occurs. As a result, the process can leave security gaps that a hacker can exploit.
You can alleviate the risk in two ways:
- You can take the help of a cloud storage solution that lets your team set up and adjust basic security controls.
- Try to get a partner with a reliable provider who can take responsibility for data storage security.
The Future of Secure Cloud Storage:
How Secure Cloud Data is in the future? First, of course, it is safer compared to an average on-prem server. These are a few examples of notable trends you might expect to get from storage security in the future.
AI tools:
In recent times, service providers have started using AI to help protect cloud data. With the help of an AI-powered tool, it becomes simple for staff members to make the job done and oversee the first few levels of security analysis.
Increasing multi-cloud storage:
An effective process is to store another copy of your data in alternate clouds.
Better performance:
Cloud storage solutions have become even more flexible, along with the security boosts.
Lower prices:
Service providers mainly focus on decreasing costs to make cloud storage more competitive. Removal of the hefty egress fees is going to be the first change.
Confidential computing:
Multiple Service providers have begun using confidential computing to make the security more powerful. It helps to increase at-rest and in-transit encryption with extra in-use encryption.
The EndNote:
How Secure Cloud Data is? If your data is not secured enough, it can experience significant harm to your business. Whether you want to move to the Cloud or keep your documents there, you need to know how secure cloud data is. Hence, your task is to research and compare the different security promises of cloud vendors.
