The role of data security and cloud computing in staying secure

In a world where technology is increasingly becoming more present in our daily lives, the threat of cybercrime has become a major concern for both individuals and corporations alike. The potential damage it can cause to an organization’s IT infrastructure, as well as its reputation, could be devastating.

Businesses today rely heavily on technology for a wide range of operations, but this reliance also carries the risk of cyberattacks. Cybercrime can have catastrophic effects on a business and even result in its permanent closure. Data loss and damage, intellectual property theft, financial data theft, operational disruption, reputational harm, and other issues are some examples of this phenomenon. The scale and sophistication of these cybercrimes must be acknowledged by organisations today. However, many of them don't discover until it's too late that their IT environments have been compromised. Statista estimates that worldwide data breaches resulted in the exposure of about 15 million records of data in the third quarter of 2022. Comparing this figure to the prior quarter, it had increased by 37%.

The cybercrime team is likely to have compromised numerous systems and applications between the initial breach and detection, worked methodically to increase its privileges within the environment, and compromised, deleted, or encrypted data during that time. As a result, businesses that come under these attacks incur higher costs and sometimes have to pay a hefty amount in order to settle the claim. To deal with such situations, organisations must be prepared and implement appropriate cyber-security measures.

Tackling cybercrime: How data security and cloud computing can help

Every organisation needs to make sure it has the right tools to handle a dynamic threat landscape, as new threats are constantly emerging. Data security is an important factor that must be taken into consideration because data is the main thing that is impacted during an attack. It covers every facet of information security, including the logical security of software programmes, the administrative and access controls, and the physical security of hardware and storage devices.

Cybercriminals have also discovered a new way to enter an organisation as more businesses have migrated to the cloud and cloud services. In a former O'Reilly study, 90% of the responding organisations around the world said they use cloud computing services. Therefore, cloud security in this situation is a method of ensuring business continuity when things go south. In many cases, cloud computing is safer than on-premises computing. Most cloud providers have far more resources than individual businesses do to keep data secure, allowing them to keep infrastructure up to date and quickly fix any vulnerabilities.

Enhancing security with cloud computing

By 2025, the majority of enterprise data centres, according to Gartner, are anticipated to migrate to the cloud. The reason is that cloud computing offers a simple, adaptable, and economical way for businesses to deliver IT services without having to be entirely focused. This indicates that the cloud provider can, to a certain extent, manage hosting and security in a much more robust, 24/7, proactive, and focused manner.

It does reduce the amount of control the business can exercise over the management of data and systems, but it also enhances the interpretation of security requirements, logs, and investigative capability.Additionally, with cloud computing, there are further options available to organisations to ensure security, such as fine-grained identity and access controls, ongoing threat detection, network and application protection, multiple layers of encryption, automated incident response and recovery, and many more.

Data security ensures proper shielding

Robust data security strategies, when implemented correctly, guard against insider threats and human error, which continue to be among the main causes of data breaches in the modern era, while also safeguarding an organization's information assets against cybercriminal activities. Implementing tools and technologies that improve the organization's visibility into where crucial data is located and how it is used is a key component of data security. These tools are able to automate reporting, apply protections like encryption, data masking, data resiliency, and redaction of sensitive files, and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.This is how these data security tools and technologies address the growing difficulties in securing today's complex, distributed, hybrid, and/or multicloud computing environments.

Way forward

Cybersecurity Ventures estimates that by 2025, the annual cost of damage from cyberattacks will be around $10.5 trillion. With cybercrime threats on the rise, it’s not a matter of if data loss occurs; it's a matter of when. Organizations must commit to constantly auditing cloud computing data and taking the appropriate actions to avoid future business disruptions. Furthermore, it is advised to work with reputable, well-known vendors while considering data security and cloud computing services. Some businesses claim to provide these utilities, but the utilities themselves may contain malicious software. In addition, the use of free software or software from an unidentified vendor should also be avoided.

Given that new malicious software emerges every other day, maintenance of these applications, servers, and clouds is essential to keeping them properly protected. The majority of security providers ensure that their databases receive at least a daily automatic update to maintain the system's level of protection. The aim of the organisation here must be to ensure that these updates are correctly implemented.

Today, the attack surface expands exponentially along with data, and cloud providers now face higher risks of data breaches. Therefore, data security is now crucial for organisations, and since data is moving to the cloud, a cloud security solution is need of the hour.

By Ratan Dargan

Ratan is Co Founder CTO Thought Sol Infotech