Main takeaways from this article:
Cloud data security protects sensitive data from unauthorized access, helps with compliance efforts, supports disaster recovery, and minimizes the risk of a breach.
Key challenges of cloud data security are misconfigurations, limited visibility, expanded attack surfaces, and complex environments and compliance requirements.
Best practices in security include identifying and encrypting sensitive data, enforcing role-based access controls, and establishing disaster recovery plans.
Wiz's Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) solution enhances cloud data security by providing unified visibility, real-time monitoring, automated threat detection, and streamlined access management.
What is cloud data security?
Cloud data security is the strategy of protecting data in the cloud from threats like unauthorized access, data breaches, and insider threats. It combines technologies, policies, and processes to safeguard data throughout its lifecycle—whether at rest or in transit—across public, private, and hybrid cloud environments. This includes managing data on-premises or through third-party cloud service providers (CSPs).
As organizations adopt IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS models, securing cloud environments becomes increasingly complex. Challenges include:
Limited visibility into data access, storage, and movement.
Difficulty maintaining multi-cloud visibility.
Navigating the shared responsibility model with CSPs.
Ensuring regulatory compliance.
With the rise of cloud-based operations, securing data is crucial as threats become more advanced, targeting vulnerabilities across all cloud environments.
47% of companies have at least one exposed storage bucket or database completely open to the internet.
Wiz State of the Cloud Report '23
Cloud data security benefits
Alongside its people, data is an organization's most valuable business asset, and its loss can have enormous repercussions. The IBM 2023 Cost of a Data Breach Report showed that data breaches cost companies an average of $4.45 million in 2023.
Here are the key benefits that make cloud security essential for modern organizations.
Protect sensitive data from breaches and unauthorized access
Cloud security measures are critical in safeguarding sensitive data by implementing powerful access controls. These controls ensure that only authorized personnel can access specific data, thus preventing unauthorized access. Measures like multi-factor authentication (MFA), role-based access controls (RBAC), and stringent password policies reinforce these defenses.
Encryption is a fundamental layer of protection. Cloud security mitigates the risk of data breaches by encrypting data in transit and at rest. Even if data is intercepted or accessed illicitly, encryption renders it unreadable to unauthorized users. These measures collectively fortify your defenses against potential security threats.
Ensure compliance with industry regulations
Adequate cloud security ensures your business complies with stringent regulatory frameworks such as HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI-DSS. By adopting comprehensive security measures, you can protect sensitive customer data, meeting the data protection standards required by these regulations. For instance, encrypting data both in transit and at rest helps minimize unauthorized access, a critical component of GDPR compliance.
Cloud security solutions often have built-in compliance management tools that facilitate continuous monitoring and automated compliance assessments. These tools help identify potential vulnerabilities and ensure that your organization consistently adheres to industry regulations, helping avoid costly legal penalties and safeguarding your reputation.
Maintain customer trust and business reputation
Securing cloud data is pivotal in maintaining customer trust and safeguarding your company’s reputation. When customers entrust their sensitive information to you, they expect it to remain protected against breaches and unauthorized access. A strong cloud data security strategy ensures that their data remains confidential and secure, fostering a sense of trust and reliability. This trust is crucial, as it influences customer retention and brand loyalty.
A solid reputation built on security can differentiate your business from competitors. Demonstrating that you take security seriously aligns with regulatory requirements and strengthens your brand integrity. It reassures customers that privacy is your priority, which translates to long-term business success and credibility.
Support business continuity with disaster recovery solutions
Disaster recovery solutions are critical to cloud data security, ensuring your business can quickly bounce back from unexpected incidents. These solutions minimize downtime by rapidly restoring essential systems and data, maintaining operational continuity. Cloud providers offer various backup options, such as snapshots and automated backups, which safeguard your data against loss.
A disaster recovery plan effectively prepares businesses for breach scenarios, including rapid response plans, forensic analysis post-incident, and swift data restoration using alternative cloud providers or on-premises infrastructure. Ensuring reliable backups protects against data loss and enhances your ability to sustain operations seamlessly.
Reduce the risk of costly data breaches and downtime
Implementing powerful cloud security practices minimizes the risk of data breaches, which can lead to severe financial losses and operational disruptions. Businesses can protect their sensitive information from unauthorized access by encrypting data, managing access controls, and continuously monitoring environments. This proactive approach ensures that potential threats get identified and neutralized before they can cause damage.
Strong security measures support business continuity by preventing costly downtime. Automated compliance assessments and a vigilant incident response plan help maintain seamless operations even during security events. Investing in cloud data security is a defensive strategy that safeguards financial stability and operational efficiency.
Enhance visibility and control over data assets
Cloud security considerably enhances visibility into data storage and access. By leveraging advanced monitoring tools and analytics, businesses can gain real-time insights into where data resides and its use. This transparency empowers organizations to spot unauthorized access and potential threats quickly, ensuring sensitive information remains secure.
Enhanced visibility allows for better control over data assets, enabling businesses to enforce strict access controls and audit trails, mitigating risks and helping maintain compliance with industry regulations. Companies can efficiently address vulnerabilities and protect their data assets by clearly viewing data flows and user interactions.
The challenges of securing data in the cloud
The only thing as dire as a data breach itself are the challenges involved with securing that data. The pitfalls include:
Misconfigurations
Misconfigurations in cloud environments are a notable source of security vulnerabilities. These can occur due to human errors or oversight during the setup and administration of cloud resources.
Here’s how such misconfigurations impact cloud data security:
Data exposure: Publicly exposed databases and storage buckets due to misconfigurations can result in sensitive data being accessible on the internet.
Unauthorized access: Inadequate configuration might allow unauthorized users to access critical data, increasing the risk of data breaches.
Compliance failures: Misaligned settings may cause an organization to violate industry regulations, leading to legal penalties and damage to reputation.
Loss of visibility: Misconfigurations can lead to a lack of visibility into data storage and access, making it difficult to monitor and control who has access to sensitive information.
Proactively addressing these misconfigurations is crucial. Regular monitoring and automated tools can help detect and resolve configuration issues before they become security threats.
Lack of visibility
Data access within and outside the network can be invisible, which can immensely impact cloud security. With a clear view of who is accessing your data, from where, and how frequently, safeguarding your assets becomes more manageable.
Here’s how a lack of visibility affects cloud security:
Data breaches: Without visibility, you can't detect unauthorized access, leading to potential data breaches.
Compliance issues: Inadequate tracking hampers your ability to comply with industry regulations, risking costly fines and reputational damage.
Insider threats: Without monitoring, it's difficult to identify malicious activity from internal users.
Here are some solutions to circumvent these issues:
Implementing advanced monitoring tools: Use tools that provide real-time data access logs and alerts.
Adopting 'Zero Trust' principles: Verify every access request and continuously monitor network activity.
Conducting regular audits: Conduct frequent security audits to identify and address visibility gaps.
Expanded attack surface
An expanded attack surface due to cloud environment flexibility and scalability presents unique security challenges, such as:
Dynamic scaling: Cloud services continually scale up and down to meet demand, making it difficult to define and secure the environment's boundaries.
Complex integrations: Integrating various remote devices, third-party applications, and public networks can be more complicated and introduce vulnerabilities.
Expansive threat perimeter: Cloud environments often face threats like brute-force attacks and organized DDoS attacks, targeting the expansive, less-defined perimeter.
Unpatched liabilities: Unpatched vulnerabilities can go unnoticed in a constantly changing environment, leading to potential exploits.
Complex environments
Modern cloud environments have several complicated components, including:
Multi-cloud and hybrid setups: Integrating and securing data across cloud providers and on-premises systems is intricate and demands the right tools to maintain uniform security measures.
Virtual machines and containers: Each virtual machine or container needs individual security configurations. Misconfigurations can lead to vulnerabilities.
APIs and Kubernetes clusters: The extensive use of APIs for inter-service communication and the orchestration of containers via Kubernetes clusters expand the attack surface considerably.
Multi-tenant risks
Multi-tenant public cloud environments where attacks can spread quickly present prominent challenges. These environments host multiple customers on shared infrastructure, which increases the risk of unauthorized data access or leakage. Here's how:
Data commingling: Different tenants' data residing on the same physical or virtual servers can lead to accidental or malicious data access.
Security gaps: One tenant's weaknesses can compromise the shared environment.
To mitigate these risks, consider the following:
Using network segmentation: Isolate tenant environments using virtual LANs (VLANs) or other segmentation techniques to prevent cross-tenant access.
Establishing reliable access controls: Implement strict identity and access management (IAM) policies to ensure data is only accessible to authorized users.
Continuous monitoring: Regularly inspect and audit cloud environments for abnormal activity or potential security breaches to respond promptly.
Compliance requirements
Regulatory compliance can require data security documentation for audits. Meeting these compliance requirements is not just about ticking a box; it's about safeguarding sensitive information and earning customer trust. Failing to adhere to compliance standards can result in legal penalties and financial losses, further emphasizing the necessity of a thorough approach to compliance in cloud security.
Challenges in achieving compliance include:
Regulatory changes: Frequent changes in regulatory standards that necessitate continuous updates.
Multi-cloud environment coverage: Ensuring comprehensive coverage across multi-cloud environments.
Up-to-date documentation: Maintaining up-to-date documentation for audits and assessments.
Businesses should implement automated compliance monitoring to quickly identify and fix issues, ensuring a secure, compliant cloud environment that protects customer data and supports their business goals.
Distributed storage complexity
Distributed data storage and databases across multiple providers, as well as data sovereignty laws based on the data's country of physical location, add layers of complexity. Here’s how:
Compliance challenges: Different regions have varying data protection laws. Ensuring compliance can be complicated when data resides in multiple jurisdictions.
Inconsistent security policies: Providers might have differing security measures, resulting in a need for uniformity in protection levels.
Increased vulnerability: Disparate storage locations can create targets for cyberattacks, making unified security management essential yet more challenging.
Data synchronization issues: Keeping distributed data synchronized and current across all locations can be technically demanding.
Management overhead: More resources and sophisticated tools are required to effectively manage security policies and compliance across various platforms.
Shadow IT
Managing and monitoring cloud and hybrid storage environments is complex, especially with the introduction of shadow IT—unvetted software, services, and tools implemented by employees or departments without IT approval. Shadow IT introduces vulnerabilities that threat actors can exploit, making cloud data security even more challenging.
Key risks include:
Weak security controls: Unauthorized cloud services often lack the same security measures as approved ones, increasing the risk of data breaches.
Human error: Employees may unintentionally share or expose sensitive data stored in unauthorized cloud services.
Malware: Cybercriminals can use malware, often introduced through phishing attacks, to steal data from unauthorized cloud services.
Common examples of shadow IT include employees using unapproved cloud storage (e.g., Google Drive), collaboration tools (e.g., Slack), or cloud-based applications (e.g., Salesforce) to store and manage company data.
Who is responsible for securing data in the cloud?
As organizations adopt multi-cloud strategies, determining responsibility for securing cloud data becomes increasingly complex.
Under the shared responsibility model, cloud providers secure the cloud infrastructure, while customers are responsible for securing their data, applications, identity and access management, and platform configuration.
This division of responsibilities can quickly become overwhelming for customers. While cloud providers implement best practices for infrastructure security, customers need to take proactive steps to safeguard their data, applications, and workloads within the cloud.
11 best practices for implementing cloud data security
The following best practices should be the starting point for implementing your cloud computing data security efforts:
1. Identify all sensitive data
Your cloud data security efforts start with data discovery to identify all the sensitive data in the organization. This visibility must be complete across all storage environments, including on-prem systems, cloud storage services, databases, and any data in transit. You'll also need to be able to identify any shadow data you have on hand.
The ability to identify any exposed APIs is another area that is critical to identifying and eliminating data vulnerabilities. Gaining this kind of visibility must be quick, continuous, and agentless to ensure a complete picture of all sensitive data is gathered without affecting the environment.
2. Classify data using context
Once all data has been identified and located, it must be classified by type, level of sensitivity, and any regulations that may apply to it. This includes scanning for PII, PHI, and PCI across your storage ecosystem.
Data should be classified by how it moves within the organization, who uses it, and how it’s being used. This context should support the proactive identification of potential attack paths and prioritize alerts for a fast response.
3. Encrypt data in transit and at rest
Encrypting data at rest and in transit is paramount to data security because it makes the data unusable to hostile actors without the decryption key. While the cloud providers offer some in-transit and at-rest encryption, organizations should add file-level encryption before making any cloud storage transfers.
4. Limit access to resources
There are several ways that you can limit access to your data including role-based access controls (RBAC), attribute-based access controls (ABAC), adhering to the Zero Trust model (which revolves around the principle of "never trust, always verify"), and enabling end-user device security. Data encryption also offers numerous ways to thwart bad actors and decrease vulnerabilities.
5. Implement data anonymization and masking
Anonymization and masking techniques protect sensitive data by obfuscating identifiable information and making it unreadable to unauthorized users. Applying k-anonymity, l-diversity, and t-closeness ensures that individual data points are indistinguishable within a group, reducing identification risk.
Pseudonymization further bolsters security by replacing private identifiers with fictitious equivalents. These strategies provide a robust layer of protection without sacrificing data utility, allowing organizations to handle sensitive information securely and comply with industry regulations.
6. Educate and train end users
Continuous education and training for end users are vital in recognizing and mitigating threats effectively. Regular sessions, including simulated phishing exercises, help employees identify potential security risks in real-time. This ongoing learning process ensures that they stay abreast of evolving cyber threats.
Training should also cover adherence to security protocols, such as data encryption and password management. By fostering a security-conscious culture, organizations can immensely reduce the risk of accidental data breaches and unauthorized access.
7. Implement business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR)
Enables fast data recovery and the resumption of normal business operations starting with the implementation of the 3-2-1-1-0 backup rule.
This backup strategy ensures there are three (3) copies of the data in addition to the original, stored across at least two (2) types of media. One (1) copy of the data is kept offsite (generally via cloud BCDR). One (1) other copy is kept offline. The organization must then verify that all the copies have zero (0) errors.
8. Monitor cloud environments continuously
Cloud environments are dynamic, requiring real-time detection of new risks, threats, and vulnerabilities. Continuous monitoring helps identify policy violations and suspicious activities, minimizing opportunities for attackers.
Regular audits ensure compliance and detect misconfigurations or unauthorized access before they escalate. This proactive approach strengthens security and enables faster responses to potential threats.
9. Automate compliance assessments
Automated compliance software can provide compliance workflow capabilities such as assessments, corrective action planning, and controls analysis and testing based on an organization’s security policies.
The ability to detect regulatory violations and enable constant security updates replaces manual spot checks, which can be impractical and error-prone.
10. Develop an incident response plan
Creating an effective incident response plan is crucial for minimizing the impact of data breaches. Begin by identifying potential threats and defining clear procedures for each scenario. Assign specific roles and responsibilities to team members, ensuring everyone knows their duties when an incident occurs.
Conduct regular training to keep the team prepared. Here's how you can do it:
Create a detailed response playbook: Build a detailed response playbook for common attack vectors.
Maintain updated contact lists: Maintain updated contact lists for internal and external stakeholders.
Establish a communication plan: Establish a communication plan to keep all parties informed during an incident.
Test and refine through simulations: Regularly test and refine your response plan through simulations and drills.
11. Implement comprehensive cloud security solutions
Organizations have many cloud data protection tools to choose from, including:
Cloud security posture management (CSPM)
Data loss prevention (DLP)
Security information and event management (SIEM)
Cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM)
Kubernetes security posture management (KSPM)
Data security posture management (DSPM)
While you might have any of these cloud data security tools in place, they can often create data security silos themselves that leave vulnerability gaps. Organizations can provide a more comprehensive and granular cloud data security platform via a Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP).
A CNAPP combines elements from all of the above, along with API discovery and protection, serverless security, and more. However, making the best determination on cloud data security solutions must start with an understanding of how data security in the cloud works.
Protect sensitive data with Wiz
The complexity of learning how to secure cloud data results directly from the many environments and tools that overlap and connect in endless ways. These combine to drive internal and external organization business, operations, communications, collaboration, and services. But to make them work securely requires comprehensive visibility via a single resource that can help monitor continuously, document events, and remediate problems as they occur.
Many cybersecurity professionals conclude that a unified cloud security platform, such as a CNAPP that includes DSPM, such as Wiz, is ideal for gaining a comprehensive cloud ecosystem visibility. The best of these solutions provides a single dashboard for all policies and alert configurations. The ability to integrate with other cloud data security solutions ensures that organizations can maximize their security management posture and provide the agility, scalability, and visibility for emerging cloud security needs.
To learn how Wiz incorporates the only comprehensive DSPM your organization will need, sign up for a personalized Wiz demo here.
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