You may be one of the many people who are reluctant to adopt cloud computing into your IT infrastructure. You likely worry about achieving a security platform that is free of threats so that your IT infrastructure and data remain protected at all times. 

Data security is the primary concern of enterprises when they are mulling over moving to the cloud. With public cloud service providers offering server space to multiple clients, your data is likely to get lost somewhere in the clouds, leaving you with hardly any control over where your data exists. 

All it takes is some understanding and astute planning to ensure that your data and applications are as safe on the public cloud as they are on-premise. Public cloud providers do have enhanced security measures in place and have an obsession with covering security risks.

Here are some tips to enhance cloud security management:

Being Aware of Where your Data Exists

Unless you know where your data exists, how can you go about making it secure? Despite having firewalls and intrusion detection tools working for you to keep intruders at bay, you can never be sure where your data is when a contract ends or when your cloud service provider shuts down the business.  

Only dedicated hardware can ensure that your data is safe and has passed the most rigorous security guidelines.

Have a Proper Plan

Security is not something that can be added as an afterthought in the final deployment or migration stages. Cloud security involves creating a master plan that takes into account your true requirements, especially compliance relating to rules and regulations. 

The solution patterns and technology need to be appraised to make sure there is a perfect fit. It doesn’t make sense to deploy your favorite solutions because you need to be sure of the requirements and use of technology that has already been tested to achieve a safer security platform. 

Client References

Before signing up with your cloud service provider, insist on getting client references. It is all the better if the references include government organizations and clients from other domains like finance, healthcare, and insurance. Of course, references by themselves may not suffice. 

However, if some big organizations have similar goals and are satisfied with what they get, you are on the right track. It makes sense to hear it from the horse’s mouth – Try contacting the references directly and find out what they have to say about the security of their data. 

Create a Backup

It would help if you remembered that one of the most vital aspects of cloud computing is being aware of how important it is to create a 100 percent backup for all your data. 

When your data is secure, so is your business, which lets you focus on your core competencies without any diversions. Many large enterprises like T Mobile, whose security team identified and prevented a malicious attack, ended up having their sensitive data compromise. 

Your Security Needs to be Identity Based

The most sensible way of creating a security platform that ensures your data and applications on the cloud are safe is by considering all assets, be their servers, data processes, databases, or even humans, as distinct identities. Such identities can be securely managed when it comes to granting access. Identity-based security is fast evolving as one of the best practices in cloud computing. An efficient security platform is one that can successfully manage and control the interaction of all identities within the enterprise. 

Going for the Right Technology

Going for the right security technology goes a long way in improving your cloud security management. What’s important is that you need to test the security technology before implementing it. 

Ensuring that Proof of Concept (POC) testing is in place is mandatory as the process allows you to play an attacker’s role to understand better how security can be breached. That is why PoC is a part of penetration testing, which is a legal and sanctioned attempt to locate security flaws and plug them. 

Penetration testers have the onus of ensuring the confidentiality of all the data they access while on the job to ensure the security of the highest degree is maintained. 

Summing it Up

While cloud security management is all about attaining proper security assurances, it isn’t something that can be guaranteed. That is why you need to be more than thorough because it is always better to be safe than sorry. 

Although private cloud providers are known to provide a secure framework, public cloud providers cannot be ignored as data security tops the list of priorities.