6 Essential Strategies on How to Prevent Data Loss in Cloud Computing
Data is the lifeblood that keeps corporations running and profitable. The constant flux of numbers and percentages provides organizations with round-the-clock input that helps streamline operations. Now imagine this all-important data is stolen, or even worse, lost due to human error. Such an event may cause significant financial loss, damage to the organization’s name, and operational disruption. Preventing data loss becomes even more essential when dealing with cloud computing services. Errors in the cloud environment, unintended deletions or overwriting of data, and hardware failure are just some of the ways organizations can lose data.
The increasing reliance on cloud computing services yields organizations plenty of benefits that are hard to replicate without it. As a result, it becomes essential to introduce precautionary data loss prevention policies.
Understanding Data Loss Risks in Cloud Computing
As we briefly mentioned, there are several ways in which data loss occurs. To prevent this, it is first essential to recognize what data loss is and how it happens. Data loss can be described as the intentional or accidental destruction, deletion, or corruption of important data. It can be caused by hardware/software malfunction, human error, or malicious intent. Some of the common causes of data loss are outlined below.
- Human Error: Most issues relating to data loss can be traced back to an employee making a mistake. Accidental deletions, overwriting, improper computer handling, and failure to follow data management/security procedures make up many cases of data loss. Training employees to detect and avoid social engineering attacks and ensuring that company policies are followed will greatly reduce the risk of human error. It is however important to note that even well-trained employees can make mistakes and, therefore, essential to have safeguards and backups to account for them.
- Cyber Threats: These can come in several forms ranging from social engineering to hacking and ransomware attacks. If an individual gains access to the organization’s internal servers, they can steal, corrupt, or even encrypt company data to cause major disruption and monetary loss. Organizations should deploy advanced threat detection measures that combat these threats to ensure data integrity.
- System Failures: Malfunctions in the hardware, power or network outages, and software bugs can cause the cloud to be unstable leading to data loss. Although cloud services have built-in redundancies to mitigate these issues, they are not infallible and properly backing up data can help reduce the chances of data loss due to system errors.
- Natural Disasters: Although not as prevalent, natural disasters like earthquakes and floods can damage data servers causing data compromise. Cloud services can help reduce this risk as their data centers are generally distributed over separate locations, minimizing the chances of a single calamity affecting your organizational data.
Companies cannot afford data loss issues as they can severely undermine operational capacity by disrupting business-critical services. Additionally, stakeholders and customers may lose trust in an organization based on these incidents. Understanding the fallout highlights the necessity of putting into action an exhaustive data loss prevention policy.
Core Principles of Data Loss Prevention
Preventing data loss involves understanding two key concepts. A hacker is not going to try to steal openly available data. Neither is it all that important to constantly backup archived data, as they do not have information that changes daily. The point is it is important to classify data based on its sensitivity and the level of protection it requires. Doing so leads us to the next step which is risk assessment. This step involves analyzing how the loss of a certain file or document will impact the organization and how to mitigate said risk.
Performing data classification and subsequent risk assessment helps organizations understand which data requires the most safekeeping and streamlines how they can go about it.
Comprehensive Strategies for Cloud Data Loss Prevention
Listed below are six important strategies that organizations should enact to ensure effective cloud data loss prevention.
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Implementing Robust Encryption Methods
Encrypting sensitive data, ideally all data, is the easiest and most straightforward way to ensure its integrity. For those of you who do not know, encryption transforms data into a scrambled format that can only be accessed and deciphered by those possessing the necessary decryption key. This ensures that even if outsiders were to somehow gain hold of the data, they would not be able to use it.
Organizations should ideally encrypt all data, both during transit and at rest. Data at rest refers to data stored in the cloud or other storage medium while data in transit refers to data that is moving between the cloud and the user’s device. There are many tools and protocols that allow organizations to encrypt both types of data and using these can help in preventing data loss.
However, one should remember that encryptions are only as secure as the management of encryption keys. It is important to not only generate unique keys but also store and distribute them securely as part of a strong data loss prevention policy.
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Enforcing Access Control Mechanisms
Preventing data loss does not only include detecting external threats. In some cases, data may be leaked by accident or by a disgruntled employee. To account for internal factors leading to data loss, organizations are advised to implement access control protocols. Role Based Access Control (RBAC) is a security measure that restricts system and data access to authorized users only. This allows an organization to manage users by grouping them based on their roles and granting them necessary access to complete their tasks. This approach helps to prevent employees from accessing unauthorized data, reducing the risk of accidental/malicious data leaks, and preventing data loss.
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is another essential data loss prevention policy. MFA requires a user to verify their identity by providing multiple factors for authentication in addition to their ID and password. These factors may include having access to the user’s mobile, company badge, or biometric verification. MFA provides an additional layer of security that prevents access solely based on knowing the password. Even if a hacker was able to obtain an employee’s login credentials, MFA prevents their entry into the system until additional verification is provided. This is especially important for cloud security where credentials are more likely to be hacked/exposed.
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Performing Regular Data Backups
Backing up data is a practice most of us learn at a very young age yet continue to ignore until after disaster strikes. It is always smart to have a backup of what you are working on, even if it is of low priority. Regularly backing up data becomes especially important when you are dealing with vast amounts of potentially sensitive and essential data. For large organizations, it is prudent to create multiple backups stored in separate locations to ensure that nothing is lost in the case of sudden disasters.
Regular backups ensure that the most up-to-date version of the document is available in the case of data loss or corruption. We also recommend testing your recovery strategies to ensure they are working optimally and that the backups can be effectively restored when needed. Additionally, educating your employees on data backup strategies and keeping them up to date on the latest practices helps in cloud data loss prevention.
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Ensuring the Security of Endpoint Devices
Often, the device accessing the cloud system serves as an entry point for cyber threats. With the widespread use of remote work and virtual desktops, more people are working from their personal laptops or tablets. While this has a huge positive impact in terms of employee convenience, these devices are often not properly secured allowing the cloud to be infiltrated by viruses and malware, leading to the loss of data. It is therefore of the utmost importance to ensure that these endpoint devices have the latest security software and protocols enabled.
Tools like Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions help organizations manage and secure user endpoints to maintain data integrity. EDR uses machine learning to identify suspicious patterns in real time while MDM allows the organization to control and enforce security policies on endpoint devices.
In addition to using tools to enforce security protocols, employees must make securing their work device a top priority for preventing data loss. They can do so by
- Updating to the latest version of their operating systems
- Ensuring that their device has a competent antivirus and firewall
- Implementing device encryption for their work profile
- Using a VPN to connect to the organizational network
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Employee Training and Awareness Programs
Not every employee is going to be up to speed on the latest changes in the cyber environment. Regularly educating them on the latest cyber threats equips them with the knowledge to effectively circumvent them. It is essential to remember that data security training should be treated as an ongoing process rather than as a one-time event. The digital landscape is constantly evolving, and it takes only a few updates for information and practices to become outdated. Organizations need to introduce training and awareness programs as part of their data loss prevention policy to help overall security.
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Continuous Monitoring and Threat Detection
To optimize cloud data loss prevention, it is essential to regularly monitor the cloud environment for abnormalities. This allows organizations to detect and neutralize any threats before it can cause significant data loss. A variety of tools are available that can help to monitor the cloud. Using systems such as Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), Intrusion Detection and Prevention System (IDPS), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA), etc. allows organizations to continually monitor and rapidly respond to any threats.
- Security Information and Event Management (SIEM): aggregates and analyzes security-related data in the cloud environment. SIEM combines security information management and security event management protocols to track and detect threats in real time.
- Intrusion Detection and Prevention System (IDPS): monitors a network for malicious communication or other threats and tries to prevent them.
- Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM): automates the detection and correction of cloud misconfigurations. These tools help reduce security breaches and improve compliance with regulatory protocols.
- Network Traffic Analysis (NTA): monitors and inspects network traffic patterns to identify potential threats. Although primarily meant to optimize network performance, NTA can also help identify and remediate security breaches.
By using these advanced tools and services, organizations can adopt a proactive approach to cloud data loss prevention.
Secure Your Data Today: Start with Apps4rent Managed Azure Services
The steps mentioned above are only useful if you have a competent cloud platform and a reputable service provider backing you up. With Apps4Rent’s Managed MS Azure services, you can be sure to receive the best prices on the market with the best support professionals available. As a Tier 1 Microsoft Partner, Apps4Rent has nearly two decades of experience which translates to quality service for all your needs. You can contact us at any time of the day (or night!) over the phone, email, or text for all your cloud computing needs.
