Three Essential Measures to Keep Your Cloud Data Safe

Recent technological advancements have provided enterprises with improved flexibility, scalability and ease of doing business. Data plays a significant role in that as enterprises leverage it to evaluate market trends, understand customers, and identify market patterns. To manage all this, enterprises are moving rapidly towards cloud storage.

A report from Research and Markets shows that the global cloud storage market grew from $83.55 billion last year to $100.2 billion in 2023 at a CAGR of 19.9%. Enterprises are increasingly turning to cloud storage to reduce costs and improve operational efficiency. However, as digitalization has taken on a new priority, the threats related to cloud security have also increased. 

According to a report by IBM, almost half of the data breaches in organisations occur in the cloud. Hence, here are a few ways to ensure that your company's cloud storage is safe: 

Deploy Transparent Data Encryption (TDE)

Cloud storage security has become a major concern among organisations as attackers continue to take advantage of system vulnerabilities. In order to tackle the issue, enterprises can consider TDE, or transparent data encryption, which requires minimum administrative effort. This is due to the fact that the functionality is embedded in the database engine. Furthermore, the log files, backups, and database are encrypted and decrypted in real time, allowing the admins, users, and developers to operate efficiently. Moreover, it stops unauthorised access to the cloud data without hampering performance. In addition, TDE can also encrypt either the entire application as well as specific columns, making the cloud storage secure. This type of encryption is available in PostgreSQL (also known as Postgres), a leading open source database.

Implement Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA)

Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) is a security framework that assumes no trust by default, meaning that every user, device, and network resource must be authenticated and authorised before accessing any data or resources. When applied to cloud storage, ZTA helps mitigate the risk of unauthorised access, data breaches, and other security threats. The techniques that could be used in a ZTA are IAM (identity access management), micro-segmentation, continuous monitoring, user behaviour analytics (UBA), and secure collaboration. By implementing ZTA measures, organisations can enhance their cloud storage security while reducing unauthorised access, breaches and also costs. According to a report by IBM, 41% of organisations that deployed ZTA have saved $1 million in breach costs.

Add Multifactor Authentication (MFA)

While passwords tend to protect the data stored in the cloud, using them as a sole tool is not enough. The cyber attackers continuously try to find accounts that have weak passwords. As they obtain access, they can potentially breach the sensitive data on the multiple accounts that are linked to the password. In this regard, MFA, or multifactor authentication, can act as an additional layer of security that asks for additional information in addition to the password. This allows for the validation of the identity of a user and gives access to only the authorised ones. This is likely to reduce the likelihood of a successful cyberattack as the login to cloud storage requires additional verification factors.

While there can be a myriad of ways to tackle the cyber-attacks on cloud storage, the intensity of these breaches is only going to increase as organisations jump on the digitalization bandwagon. According to a report by Juniper Research, by the end of 2023, 146 billion records are anticipated to be stolen by cyber attackers. In a bid to reduce these attacks, organisations need to build resilience, which can be done by adapting cutting-edge solutions such as TDE, ZTA, and MFA.

Cloud storage breaches can hamper enterprises’ productivity and reputation while also might include heavy costs. Therefore, businesses who are looking forward to securing their cloud storage can consider collaborations that could provide Postgres managed cloud services that give them control over infrastructure, minimum downtime, disaster recovery features, and top-notch security.

-Dan Garcia, Chief Information Security Officer at EnterpriseDB