6 Best Practices for Multi-Cloud Data Security

Data security means protecting your sensitive information wherever you store it.

Within the enterprise, organizations have complete control over this data. The institute’s policies and technology make sure its confidentiality and integrity. When that data leaves the restriction of corporate walls, things get complicated.

Faced with this challenge, many organizations are turning to the cloud for help. The cloud helps companies avoid capital expenditures on infrastructure by hosting their data. It gives access to huge storage capacity to expand and reduce in response to business needs.

However, while the cloud is a valuable tool for business, it’s not a silver bullet. You must safeguard information stored in a shared service environment. It helps to avoid putting your organization at risk. You can do it successfully by going beyond traditional data security strategies. And leverage the best practices through IT consultant service experts. It helps you implement an effective multi-cloud data security solution.

What is Multi-Cloud Data Security? 

Multi-cloud data security means taking a set of best practices. Then, apply them to protect sensitive information regardless of where you stored it. It takes the cloud features that make data storage dynamic, scalability, and high availability. And it applies a balance in the form of equally beneficial controls. So focus only on securing company data stored on-premises. Multi-cloud data security extends the same approach to resources stored in the cloud.

Enforcing the best practices of multi-cloud security
 

1. Identify sensitive data and understand where it lives

The first step in executing a successful multi-cloud data security strategy is to identify the types of information your organization needs to protect. It requires analyses of all the places where the organization stores data. It includes PCs to virtualized servers, to applications on mobile devices. It may even involve looking at data that you archived or scheduled for deletion. Once you have assessed your storage ecosystem, it is easier to identify the data that requires the most protection.

2. Standardize on a single, reliable cloud infrastructure provider

Once you’ve identified the data that needs the most protection, it’s time to turn your attention toward which platforms are best suited for managing it. First, consider managed cloud services providers to provide redundancy. As one of them might experience outages or other issues. 

But don’t spread your data across many cloud providers. As it risks without balancing on a single platform for your sensitive information. That way, you can leverage the security features of that platform to protect it wherever it goes.

3. Enforce strong authentication and encryption 

Once you’ve identified how you’ll store your data in the cloud and chosen a provider with security capabilities that match your needs. It’s time to implement strong authentication and encryption abilities across all your cloud data storage platforms. That way, you can keep your sensitive information in a single location and ensure that unauthorized users or applications can’t access it. While this may seem like a daunting task, there are tools you can use to make it easier. 

• Multi-factor authentication allows you to protect your accounts with a combination of something. It includes (like a password), and a one-time code sent to your smartphone.

• Identity management platforms can help centralize the supply and management of multi-factor authentication tokens. Along with user accounts and permissions across your cloud storage providers.

• And for encryption, you can use a single key to encrypt all your data or create unique keys per provider.

Whichever approach you choose, be sure that it carries out consistently across many platforms. IT consulting firms make sure that they use the true method that helps you work remotely and securely.

4. Implement a cloud access security broker

A cloud access security broker (CASB) is a must-have for a multi-cloud data security solution. Businesses use it to manage their cloud storage accounts. A CASB works by combining all your existing security tools. In addition, it includes authentication and encryption services. 

You can also extend that skill across multiple cloud providers. For example, CASB allows you to put multi-cloud data security policies across multiple providers.

5. Audit your usage

The cloud can be a great way to allow employees to work more efficiently. But multi-cloud data security best practices also need you to audit how users access and store sensitive data. If you’re not sure what employees are holding in the cloud, there’s a good chance some information is being accessed without managed IT service visibility and control. And that can pose severe risks to your organization.

To get visibility into how your users access and store sensitive data in the cloud. First, look for an auditing solution capable of tracking activity across many cloud applications. That way, you can gain insight into who’s accessing data, what they’re storing, and how often they’re doing it.

6. Backup and restore from a secure cloud environment 

One way that attackers access sensitive information is through data breaches. 81% of all security incidents reported to the US government involved stolen or compromised user credentials. 

To protect against this threat, you need to make sure to back up your critical information. Put them in a secure environment that you can restore in the event of a security breach. In multi-cloud environments, look for a backup and correct solution capable of backing up from one cloud to another.

Final Thoughts:

Many organizations use the public cloud to allow employees to work. And they need to meet key business objectives. But considering a move to a multi-cloud environment can introduce several security challenges. And that you must state in your organization. 

Best practices help you maintain agreement and gain control of your sensitive data. So, it’s essential to consider how these policies will apply across the tools you’re using to automate cloud workloads. Look for an IT consultant service solution that integrates all cloud providers to simplify implementation and promote more security.