Cloud Computing Security Best Practices

Public cloud computing can offer cost savings and flexibility, but security must be a top priority. To ensure cloud computing security, organizations must update governance, review data sensitivity and determine which workloads are appropriate for the cloud.

Ensuring data and workload security in the cloud

While public cloud computing can provide many benefits, including flexibility and cost savings, cybersecurity is a critical component that is often overlooked. Organizations must adhere to several best practices during migration projects to ensure the security of the data and workloads they move to the public cloud.

Cybersecurity for public-cloud workloads is largely a responsibility shared with the cloud service provider , and the level of ownership for corporate IT teams depends on the type of cloud platform (e.g., Platform as a Service ; PaaS and Infrastructure as a Service ; IaaS). The offerings of each cloud services provider also vary to some degree.

To start, one of the most important steps for organizations pursuing the use of cloud services is updating existing governance models. This practice helps organizations identify and understand the data that needs to be secured, even for companies without public-cloud interest.

One criterion for review is information sensitivity. Organizations must determine appropriate access and protection for sensitive information, including customer credit card, personal health or employer data. Compliance with applicable regulations and compliance frameworks is also necessary.

Another part of any governance model review should be deciding which workloads are best suited to the public cloud and which are best suited to a private cloud or on premises. Decisions like these must be guided by data and workload classification.

What goes into good governance

Good governance also means putting the right processes in place to mitigate issues like shadow IT, provide appropriate visibility of cloud resources, support risk management efforts and allow for secure migrations. Key personnel, including reps from IT, security, legal, human resources and the lines of business, should be included in the governance model planning process.

Once the governance model review is complete, it’s crucial to test and verify the model by ensuring that security controls are working as expected. Verifying the model thoroughly also involves ensuring protocols are followed, migrated applications and workloads are behaving as they should and the user experience has not been negatively impacted.

Providing cybersecurity training for employees that addresses unique public cloud considerations is another good practice. Teammates should understand cybersecurity is everyone’s responsibility as well as what to look for or avoid to help protect data in the public cloud.

Smart tools leader to smarter cybersecurity.

Finally, the right cybersecurity solutions are required. Smart tools can help organizations manage and control the cloud environment similar to how they manage and control their on-premises IT infrastructure. They should ideally complement internal systems and built-in public-cloud-provider offerings.

As organizations begin moving workloads to the public cloud, they must assess the performance of the workloads. The workloads must perform as expected and meet the company’s availability, quality and user-experience requirements.

Integrating public cloud into an IT strategy results in a number of business benefits. These cybersecurity best practices should lead to improvements to associated outcomes and overall experience with public cloud platforms.