Data is the new fuel that helps companies nowadays. Companies use data for various purposes, analyze it to get more users, increase customer reach, or market them with new products. The intense usage of data across the globe, irrespective of the industry the company is operating in, makes it a sweet spot for threat actors. This is where Cloud Data Protection comes into the picture.
Cloud Data Protection (CDP) is a process used by companies to secure the data stored in the cloud from threat actors. Its goal is to avoid unauthorized access to sensitive data and prevent data breaches. Cloud-based data protection is a multi-strategy process that includes encryption, access controls, data loss prevention, and more components.
In this blog post, we will learn what cloud data protection is, why companies prioritize cloud data protection, and how can you protect your data in the cloud.. We will also discuss some common types and elements of the process. At last, we will discuss how SentinelOne can help you improve your cloud security posture.
What is Cloud Data Protection?
As discussed before, cloud data protection is a process of securing the data stored in the cloud. The data can be anything, starting from employee lists to customer passwords, orders, etc. One thing to note about data protection and the cloud is that it is not just limited to securing sensitive data but also processing it across cloud environments and dealing with its transmission. The goal of cloud data protection is to ensure the CIA of the data, which includes Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability while using the benefits offered by the cloud.
Cloud data protection deals with a number of technical components. Let’s discuss how to protect cloud data by using them:
1. Encryption
Encryption is the process of converting plain text into some gibberish form that humans or machines can’t understand directly. Encryption for data at rest and in transit is a key component of the data protection strategy. Encryption at rest means when the data is not being transferred to any destination via any medium, such as passwords stored in DB, it should be properly encrypted. Some common encryption techniques used for data at rest are Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and Triple Data Encryption Standard (TDES).
2. Access Controls
Access controls are used in the cloud infrastructure to restrict data access to users who have already been authenticated. Access controls in the cloud are enforced using identity and access management (IAM) that helps enforce policies like multifactor authentication (MFA) and role-based access control (RBAC). This ensures that only accounts that need access to certain resources or data have that.
3. Data Backup & Recovery
Data, being the fuel for companies, needs to be safe and secure from any natural or security incident. This is where data backup and recovery strategies come in handy. Backups of storage buckets, databases, and application code are stored, so if the data gets deleted intentionally or unintentionally, it can be restored. Most cloud providers also offer their own solutions for automated backups with point-in-time recovery.
4. Compliance Standards
Companies operating in industries where compliance is mandatory, such as payments, healthcare, etc, need to have compliance and governance frameworks to support them in working with legal and regulatory obligations. This includes maintaining an audit trail and implementing policies that comply with the likes of GDPR and HIPAA.
5. Continuous Monitoring
Monitoring and threat detection systems are important pieces of information when data can be leaked at any time. Companies need to continuously review cloud environments for any abnormality or security weaknesses. This can be done using sophisticated analytics and machine learning algorithms. These systems can help identify unusual behavior so organizations can respond to potential breaches in near-real-time.
Why Do We Need Cloud Data Protection?
With companies migrating from on-prem services to data protection in the cloud, we are seeing a shift in the ways they handle and store huge volumes of confidential information. This makes secure and durable cloud data protection and recovery a vital issue. When organizations are moving their workloads to the cloud, they enter a whole new world of security that is beyond simple protection mechanisms.
In cloud environments, data is more exposed to attacks due to being distributed in nature and following a shared responsibility model, as opposed to the centralized security controls an organization may have in the case of on-premises infrastructure. This exposure of data demands a holistic approach to secure data from unauthorized access and other security breaches.
Another reason for having cloud data protection is compliance. Industries adhering to data protection standards like GDPR in Europe and HIPAA in healthcare are just examples. These rules or regulations ensure guidelines from the perspective of safety requirements, which must be followed in order to secure sensitive personal/customer data stored by companies. Non-compliance can lead to extreme consequences and spoil the name of the organization, causing a loss of customer trust.
Apart from compliance, it is essential to take into account the quickly changing nature of cyber threats, which makes the protection of cloud data a critical concern. Attackers are figuring out different things they can do to applications hosted in cloud infra, from reconnaissance to running exploits. Organizations without proper protective measures for the cloud infrastructure in place can lose significant amounts of money, and their operations could come to an abrupt halt, thereby disrupting customer faith in them.
How Is Data Protected in the Cloud?
Cloud data protection is achieved using a set of technologies and practices that aim to control data in the cloud through the use of public, private, and hybrid clouds. One of the main ways to keep the data secure from threat actors is by using encryption, which encrypts data so that it is unreadable unless decrypted with a key. Modern-day cloud providers such as AWS and GCP provide built-in options for implementing encryption at rest and transit. Using both layers of encryption helps to create a secure pathway against unauthorized access.
Access control mechanisms also play a significant role in the protection of cloud data. These are the mechanisms that help enforce the idea that only authenticated users should be allowed to access the specific resource or dataset. To manage user identities and access policies, Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems are used. These systems are also provided by cloud providers. To have better security controls, additional verification can be added for users to log in, with features like multi-factor authentication (MFA), which extends their use by using more than just a password. User roles should be restricted with Role-based access control (RBAC) to prevent users from having any information they should not have access to.
Alongside data encryption and access controls, cloud security services help with continuous monitoring and threat detection to ensure that your data is safe in the cloud. With machine learning algorithms, advanced monitoring tools can identify anomalies and even security threats in close to real-time.
These tools can help spot odd patterns or behaviors that can result in a security breach and lead to a quick response. This is achieved by having cloud providers integrate services that provide insight into network traffic, user activities, and potential exposures so that organizations can practice security in depth.
What Are the Types of Cloud Data Protection?
There are several types of cloud data protection, each serving different security requirements and challenges related to storing and processing data in the cloud.
Common types of these include data redundancy, identity management, network security, compliance management, and incident response.
1. Data redundancy
One aspect of cloud data protection is data redundancy, which is when you store multiple copies of data across different locations or systems (it can be in the cloud or on-prem as well). This keeps the data available and recoverable in case of hardware failures, natural disasters, or any other disruption.
The range of redundancy measures implemented by most cloud providers lie at different levels (local, regional, or global) that exist solely to increase the chances of keeping data available and resilient in case things go south.
2. Identity Management (IM)
It is the process of validating the identity of users to check who they claim to be and control their access to resources in the cloud. The IM process should work with enhanced ways for authentication, like biometric verification or single sign-on (SSO), to make integration and authentication simple for companies while at the same time ensuring security.
3. Network Security
The goal of network security is to protect the data in motion along networks. Data in transit is the traffic, which includes VPNs, firewalls, and IDS. Network security tools such as AWS Macie AWS Shield are used to protect against unauthorized access by securing data in transit from users to the cloud services and vice versa.
4. Compliance management
As discussed before, compliance is super important for companies. This means having policies and meeting legal obligations such as GDPR for any data with consumer information, HIPAA if it’s related to healthcare, and PCI DSS around payments. These compliance standards pave the way for enterprises to assess and audit their adherence to these standards as well.
5. Incident response
Incident response is the process of detecting and managing things in case of a security incident, making it an essential part of cloud data protection. It means having predetermined plans and strategies for detecting, addressing, and responding to data breaches or other security incidents. Proper incident response helps prevent serious damage and quicken the recovery in case of any incident.
Key Elements of Cloud Data Protection
Cloud data protection involves several critical elements that go beyond basic encryption and access controls. These elements are essential for building a comprehensive security strategy tailored to the unique challenges of cloud environments:
- Data Classification: Data classification includes the identification of data and categorizing the data on the basis of its sensitivity and importance in organizations. Data classification enables organizations to identify the level of security and set compliance requirements for various data types.
- Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM): CSPM tools constantly evaluate cloud environments to detect security misconfigurations and compliance risks. They provide assurance about security controls and automate responses to vulnerabilities.
- Application Security: As the applications get migrated and deployed in the cloud, it is crucial to secure them. This will include secure coding practices, vulnerability assessments, as well as application firewalls to protect from various injection attacks such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting.
- Data Integrity Checks: Integrity is part of the CIA triad and allows you to confirm that data has not been changed by any means and is in the same state as it was when it was originally created. For example, checksum and hash functions are techniques used to ensure the integrity of stored data.
Benefits of Cloud Data Protection
There are multiple benefits of cloud-based data protection, which help to secure and maintain the efficiency of handling data in cloud environments. Being familiar with these cloud benefits can help organizations decide whether the cloud is a good choice for them or not.
- Elasticity and Flexibility: Cloud data protection solutions are built for elastic storage and processing, enabling organizations to expand or contract storage/processing as required. This allows companies to easily cope with data volume growth without the need for massive infrastructural overhauls.
- Automated Compliance: Most cloud providers bundle compliance controls as a service, making it easier for organizations to meet security regulations with less effort. Among them are automated audit trails, encryption, and reporting tools, which make it easier to adhere to standards such as GDPR or HIPAA.
- Cost Benefits: Using security services from the cloud, such as AWS Guard Duty or Azure Security Center, enables reduced costs in terms of managing on-premises security infrastructure. Enterprises can be more cost-effective with the cloud by using a pay-as-you-go model. As per pay-as-you-go mode, you only pay for exactly what is consumed, so you don’t have to pay anything extra other than what you used.
- Threat Detection: Cloud providers have in-house threat detection tools that use strong machine learning algorithms for near-to-real-time threat detection. These tools are comparatively better than the traditional approach of manually looking into threat feeds.
- Disaster Recovery: Fast data restoration, if things go south, is a vital piece of cloud protection the system provides under its given requirements. This helps companies reduce downtime and enables business continuity even in case of unexpected or unscheduled interruptions.
Cloud Data Protection Challenges
Although cloud data protection offers a fair share of advantages, it also comes with some challenges. Companies must deal with such challenges to have a cloud data protection plan and implement a layered defense strategy. Let’s understand these challenges in detail.
#1. Privacy
A major concern of using the cloud to store sensitive data is that once it gets onto a server, you may lose complete control over privacy or the ability of third parties to gain access to that information. Data might end up stored in multiple jurisdictions, with associated varying laws.
#2. Multi-Cloud Environments
A Multi-Cloud environment allows companies to use private, public, or hybrid clouds. It also can be a combination of two and three. It is difficult to manage data protection across all cloud platforms due to the different mechanics of each type of cloud. Coordinating and managing all the moving parts to ensure continuity takes an incredible level of expertise.
#3. Shared Responsibility Model
Cloud providers offer a shared responsibility model. According to this, the responsibility of securing the cloud is not just of the cloud provider but of the end user as well. The end user here can be an enterprise or a solo developer. This results in confusion over which portions of security lie between whose responsibility, leading to possible exploitations.
#4. Disaster Recovery
Cyber threats continuously evolve, and so must your approach to security. However, it is important that organizations keep up to date with addressing new vulnerabilities and attack vectors as they arise.
Best Practices for Cloud Data Protection
Cloud data protection helps, but when topped up with some best practices, it helps prevent various attacks without doing much. Let’s discuss some of them in depth:
- Use Strong Authentication: Adding an extra layer of security by enforcing multi-factor authentication (MFA) for users accessing the cloud for data or resources can help prevent brute-force and password spray attacks.
- Ensure Regular Security Policy Updates: Keep in mind that security policies must also be reviewed and updated regularly as new threats emerge and regulations change. This approach proactively supports strong defense as time passes.
- Run Routine Security Audits: Regular security audits of cloud environments serve as a good way to identify any vulnerabilities while also ensuring that all systems meet security standards. This can be done by an internal or in-house security team or by hiring an external security audit team. Performing regular audits can help identify any weakness in the system before the attacker can discover and exploit it.
- Encrypt Sensitive Data: Always make sure to encrypt data, be it in the database or transmission. Strong encryption algorithms allow important data to be secure so no one can have access or intercept incidents.
- Training: Educating employees on best practices in cloud security is essential to avoid breaches from human error. Preventive measures should include training in identifying phishing scams and ensuring that home devices used for work are safe.
How to Select a Secure Cloud Data Protection Tool?
The market is flooded with cloud data protection tools and solutions, making it hard for enterprises to choose the right solution. These are the five most important things to look for in a cloud data protection security tool:
- All-Inclusive Security Capabilities: Verify whether the tool offers multiple security capabilities, including managing encryption, access controls, data loss prevention, and threat detection.
- Integration Capabilities: The tool you pick should be capable of blending with the technology stack and cloud platforms that you currently own. This will help you save time later on while integrating.
- Compliance Support: Select a tool that offers strong compliance support for all related regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI DSS. Some of the key features include an automated audit trail, built-in reporting, and predefined compliance templates that make it easier to follow legal obligations, etc.
- Scalability and Performance: The best migration tool should scale with your needs as the number of users or the volume of data within your organization increases without sacrificing performance.
- Simple Interface and Human Support: The interface should be self-explanatory and easy to use so that one can manage the security settings effectively. Also, think about the quality of customer support that is provided by the vendor, including technical support training posts.
How Does SentinelOne Help?
As a powerful endpoint protection solution, SentinelOne helps you protect your customer’s data stored in the cloud. Built with the focus to provide support around point-in-time protection, SentinelOne is a platform that uses AI and machine learning to immediately respond and decode threats, offering multi-layered security against malware, ransomware, and other cyberattacks.
SentinelOne can help you improve threat detection, and it is capable of detecting suspicious behavior with no need for typical signature-based approaches. It is, therefore, able to effectively detect several previously unknown threats. Auto-mitigation and response actions quickly cut off infected endpoints or revert malicious activities to reduce the overall business impact of the attack.
It integrates easily with a variety of cloud platforms and IT infrastructures so that businesses can continue using the same security policies for all ecosystems, regardless of whether they are public or private. This centralized management console gives you instant visibility of your endpoint and cloud assets from a single pane of glass, making it easier to keep track of the status of all your connected devices.
SentinelOne platform has strong compliance support features to help organizations satisfy regulatory requirements with detailed audit logs and reporting. It means businesses are able to show that they comply with their own industry standards.
Singularity™ Cloud Data Security offers machine-speed malware scanning and provides adaptive, scalable, and AI-powered security solutions for Amazon S3 and NetApp. It detects without delays and streamlines automated threat responses with automatic quarantine of malicious objects. You can ensure no sensitive data leaves your cloud environments and it simplifies security administration. Users can leverage its load-balanced protection against file-born malware, zero-days, and secure cloud workloads, identities, and other digital assets. Singularity™ Cloud Native Security comes with an AI-powered CNAPP that features a unique Offensive Security Engine. Singularity™ Cloud Workload Security provides real-time AI-powered threat protection for your servers, VMs, and containers. SentinelOne security solutions are built on an eBPF architecture and offer fully integrated cloud security. Its Singularity™ Platform
is the world’s most advanced autonomous cyber security solutions and it is supercharged by Purple AI, your very own security analyst. Augment native endpoint, cloud, and identity telemetry with any third-party data. You can secure your hybrid clouds, prevent credentials misuse, and get proactive protection for all attack surfaces by using Singularity™ XDR as it is built to scale.
Conclusion
Cloud data protection is crucial at a time when more and more organizations are beginning to move their operations to the cloud. Although the cloud is great when it comes to scalability and saving money, it poses several security risks and privacy concerns. To overcome such issues, enterprises use cloud data protection tools such as SentinelOne. These tools can be easily integrated with your existing cloud infrastructure.
By implementing best practices for cloud data protection discussed in the blog and integrating them with suitable tools, companies can stay ahead of threat actors and secure their cloud infrastructure.
FAQs
1. How does the cloud secure data?
Cloud providers secure data through a combination of technologies and practices designed to protect information throughout its lifecycle. This includes encryption for data at rest and in transit, using identity and access management (IAM) systems to control user access, and continuous monitoring for suspicious activities.
2. Why is Cloud Data Protection Important?
Cloud data protection is important because it helps to secure sensitive information from unauthorized access, breaches, and loss while ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements. As organizations increasingly rely on cloud services for their operations, protecting data becomes essential to maintain trust with customers and stakeholders.