Getting Serious About Your Cloud Cybersecurity: A Guide

Is your Cloud cybersecurity an afterthought right now? Why your business should be taking cybersecurity more seriously check out this guide.

In today’s world, the security that governs your digital systems is becoming more and more important. Without high-quality security guarding your data, you may be exposed to leaks, breaches and threats. Meanwhile, the rise of the cloud has only made this protection requirement more challenging to achieve – and more complex to monitor. With this in mind, this article aims to instruct and advise businesses across the country in the subtle are of boosting your cloud security, enabling you to get serious with this new and developing responsibility for businesses. 

Why is Cybersecurity an Issue?

For smaller businesses without a large number of customers, the typical attitude towards cybersecurity and the cloud is unguarded and relaxed. The logic goes that if your business is small, it’s not worth attacking. 

This logic is seriously flawed for several reasons. Not only is the data that your company stores valuable – it’s a liability when leaked. Regulators have now put in place a series of penalties and fines that aim to prevent consumer data being leaked to bad actors on the internet. This means your company, however small, could face crippling fines if your data is leaked.

Meanwhile, protecting your company with cybersecurity means protection against disruption. If you’re suffering a malware invasion or a hack, your company cannot operate at full capacity, as it’ll disrupt your digital systems, preventing staff from working. This means cybersecurity is a must-have for businesses of any size.

Why the Cloud?

Many enterprises prefer to work with cloud-based apps and cloud-based data. This is as opposed to the physical network which would store your files and data within your offices. The rise of remote working this year has meant that cloud computing has risen from a luxury to a necessity – resulting in more and more firms relocating to the cloud.

With this wholesale move come new threats. Systems set up on the cloud involve a different set of security protocols and different access points for criminals and hackers to exploit. You need to begin adopting a zero-trust system on your cloud-based network to avoid damaging breaches in the future.

What is Zero Trust?

The concept of zero trust revolves around the concept of ‘guilty until proven innocent’ when it comes to those accessing files on your cloud-based network. A Zero Trust Network will ensure that you’re always asking your staff – and other external actors – to provide authentication and security login details before accessing your files. The idea of zero trust has proven to be a useful way to differentiate between trusted members of staff, and those who you don’t want anywhere near your data.

So, to protect your digital systems when they’re uploaded onto the cloud, you must be able to operate with this zero trust framework at all times. You can read more about how to set up a zero trust protocol online – and you can speak with cybersecurity experts to ensure you’re taking the correct approach at all times.

Understanding the Cloud

The cloud is a difficult concept to grapple with if you’re not trained in digital infrastructure. The simple name belies the fact that the cloud is, in fact, storage space for several different facilities – including your saved files, your communications, and some of the most essential apps that you use within your business.

If you don’t understand your cloud-based network, and yet you’re operating with software and storage facilities which use the cloud, you are more likely to suffer a cybersecurity issue down the line. This is exactly why zero trust networks are so important: they provide you with a high level of cybersecurity, policing individual access, as standard.

But the crucial point here is that the cloud isn’t just helping you to save documents that others can access remotely. It’s also how you plug in new software solutions to your business, and how your team can collaborate on Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, and other modern software solutions. All of these software products are weak spots in your overall cybersecurity infrastructure – and they need protecting too.

Cybersecurity Software

The software that you currently use to protect your digital systems is likely to offer some form of protection on the cloud as well as to your physical network and the hardware that your staff uses. Nonetheless, it’s incredibly important that you check with your cybersecurity provider to see what updates they may have concocted – as these could be crucial for protecting against new and developing threats related to remote working and cloud-access storage.

The ‘new normal’ of remote working has forced businesses online and into the cloud. Still, it’s also forced the hand of cybercriminals, who are interested in breaching your data to extract valuable information about your customers, which they can then sell on for a profit. All changes to the way businesses process data means criminals adapt and find new ways to hack companies; you need to ensure your cybersecurity provider is on the ball to avoid new kinds of digital hacks. 

Conclusion: Your Cloud Security

As you’ll have learned in this piece, cybersecurity is now, in large part, about protecting your data on the cloud. With a zero trust framework in operation at all times, you’ll be able to monitor those who access your cloud-based data and prevent unknown actors from breaching your internal systems. But your cloud security is also about using the right, trusted software – and protecting yourself with up-to-date, well-regarded cybersecurity software.

With the world-changing as a result of COVID-19, now is the time to begin taking your cybersecurity provisions seriously, as more and more cybercriminals are finding ways into the digital back offices of firms across the world. To ensure that only those workers whom you trust can access your most sensitive data, you should begin building that all-important zero trust network, helping you keep your information private and safe.

This guide aims to instruct you about cybersecurity in the age of cloud computing, offering insights and advice that’ll help you become cyber-secure in 2020 – and long into the future.