How Does Cloud Data Security Work?
Cloud data security is designed to protect cloud data in each of its potential states, including:
- At Rest: Data at rest can be encrypted with symmetric encryption algorithms and have access managed by least privilege access control. Encryption keys should be securely stored within a secure key management system.
- In Transit: Data in transit, moving within a cloud environment, between environments, or to a user, should be encrypted as well. Client-server sessions can be protected by TLS, while others may require the use of a virtual private network (VPN) or similar secure remote access solution.
- In Use: Data in use generally can’t be encrypted. But, the organization can implement access controls and attempt to protect applications from being exploited in ways that could leak sensitive data.
Benefits of Cloud Data Security
A strong cloud data protection program can provide various benefits to an organization, including:
- Improved Security: Implementing strong cloud data security helps to protect an organization’s sensitive data against potential breaches and other security incidents. This helps to avert financial losses, downtime, compliance penalties, and other potential effects of a breach.
- Reputation Protection: Customers expect organizations to protect the data entrusted to them against breach and misuse. Avoiding data breaches helps to protect an organization’s reputation with customers, partners, vendors, and other third-party partners.
- Regulatory Compliance Requirements: Companies are subject to various data privacy laws that mandate that they control access to sensitive customer data in their care. Strong cloud data security not only helps organizations achieve regulatory compliance but also helps to avoid reportable breaches that could result in compliance penalties.
Common Threats to Cloud Data Security
The CIA triad describes the three main threats that attackers pose to an organization’s data, and these are equally applicable in the cloud. Common cloud data security threats include:
- Unauthorized Access: Cybercriminals can gain unauthorized access to an organization’s cloud data by defeating access controls, exploiting vulnerabilities in applications with access to sensitive data, deploying malware, or other means.
- Data Modification: Cyberattackers also pose a threat to the integrity of data stored in cloud environments. Attackers could encrypt data with ransomware, corrupt it, or make more targeted modifications, such as injecting malicious content into AI training data.
- Denial of Service (DoS): DoS attacks threaten an organization’s access to the data required to perform key operations. Data availability could be threatened by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, ransomware infection, or other means.
Best Practices for Securing Cloud Data
Some best practices for protecting cloud data include:
- Encrypt Sensitive Data: Encryption protects against unauthorized access to data by making it unreadable without access to the decryption key. Cloud data should be encrypted while at rest and in transit.
- Implement Access Controls: Least privilege access controls ensure that users, applications, and devices only have access to the data and resources needed for their role. Implementing strong access controls reduces the risk that an attacker will be able to gain unauthorized access to sensitive cloud data.
- Manage Software Vulnerabilities: Applications commonly have access to sensitive data, and vulnerabilities such as SQL injection can expose this data. Companies should try to find and fix vulnerabilities during development, perform frequent vulnerability scanning and remediation, and deploy application security (AppSec) solutions to block these attacks.
- Deploy Data Loss Prevention (DLP): DLP solutions are designed to identify and block attempted exfiltration of sensitive data from a corporate network. They can also help identify and block data breaches in cloud environments.
The Shared Responsibility Model
Understanding the cloud shared responsibility model is essential to managing cloud security. Cloud customers share responsibility for their cloud infrastructure with their cloud service provider with the exact breakdown dependent on the cloud services model in use (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, etc.).
Organizations should understand the cloud shared responsibility model, their responsibilities under it, and the security controls that they need to manage for each of their cloud environments.
Stay Secure with CloudGuard from Check Point
Protecting cloud data against unauthorized access and other risks requires a clear understanding of the threats that companies face in the cloud. To learn more about the current cloud risk landscape, check out Check Point’s 2024 Cloud Security Report.
Check Point CloudGuard is a prevention-focused cloud security platform designed to help organizations minimize the risk to their cloud data and applications. See how it works for yourself with a free trial.
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