Ensuring Security In Public Cloud Hosting

As the world goes fully digital, there are plenty of questions we need to ask ourselves when it comes to data security and privacy. Whether you are an individual or a business, you need to be aware of the information that you own in the digital era, and most importantly, know how to protect it.

Nowadays, most businesses store their data on-premise and look after it by themselves. However, a lot of that is going in the past soon, as a trend called cloud hosting is likely to take over. By definition, cloud hosting is a technology that offers a secure virtual environment and optimized costs.

Besides the cloud cost optimization and the numerous control levels, there are benefits like increased protection and continuity, making this the preferred environment for many businesses around the world. With public cloud hosting, you can expect the most out of data privacy, data integrity, encryption, and more. Below, we are showing you some of the best ways you can improve the security of your public cloud computing services.

Implementing a security policy

The first logical thing to do when migrating your key services to the cloud is to create a security policy. This initial process is standard and ensures that one’s organization can manage the security while assuring that the measures are deployed. 

Furthermore, the security policy covers all the required processes and procedures that will be implemented along with the responsibilities assigned to each accountable person.

Running a SIEM solution

If you are new to this term, a SIEM solution basically stands for security information and event management. In other words, this is a solution designed to collect and converge data from different parts of the IT environment for the intent of security monitoring. 

In the realm of public cloud hosting, SIEM can collect and aggregate logs in a central location (which would be the cloud). Its advanced visibility, data normalization, log correlation, and threat detection make it a solution to consider in every workspace.

Securing all the physical devices

The security of your premises and the devices kept inside are essential for your public cloud system’s safety. Hence, it is important to talk about security and the best ways to safeguard data and prevent an incident such as loss or theft of your devices.

Data stored on your devices can cost you a fortune if stolen, and to prevent such unauthorized access, you need to secure all of the devices’ storage along with any other robust mechanisms. One of the best ways to start is by implementing stronger passwords or even a two-factor authentication (2FA). Still, security can be a major challenge if your employees are taking their devices with them – something that is especially common with remote and hybrid work environments.

Securing your information (data integrity)

By definition, data integrity refers to the protection of data from any unauthorized modification, fabrication, or deletion. This accounts for both data on servers, as well as information stored on network appliances. Here, role-based authorization is key – you need to decide on the authorization level you want and ensure your data is not modified or lost by any unauthorized users.

Your system administrator is in charge of granting access to the data to users, which is how you ensure proper data integrity. When hosted on the cloud, your data’s integrity is protected as there are bots monitoring and spotting unusual activities. They prevent unauthorized access by using antivirus and firewall solutions, multi-factor verification, intrusion detection, etc.

Selecting a reliable and compliant cloud provider

Another important practice when it comes to implementing public cloud hosting is selecting a provider. Here, you need to consider providers that are fully compliant with the latest industry-defined security standards, as well as ones that have products with secured times. 

Make sure to always double-check for the compliances with the hosting before signing the contract. The good thing, however, is that nowadays, most public cloud service providers are fully compliant to these industry standards.

Considering data backup and recovery

It goes without saying that when choosing a cloud hosting provider, you need to think about all of the worst scenarios that could happen. One of them is having your data stolen, which would need a solution like BCDR. For those of you new to this term, BCDR stands for Business Continuity and Data Recovery.

With cloud hosting, you need to make sure that you have regular and multiple data backups on remote servers. This would ensure business continuity in the worst-case scenario. Even if some of the servers get damaged, your data will still be retrieved.

Final thoughts

In times when sensitive data is accessed by many users in the same cloud space, security can be a challenge. Public cloud hosting is a great solution for businesses looking to protect their data. With it, one can safeguard sensitive data and cater to their growing business needs, but also ensure full business continuity even if their data gets compromised and/or stolen.