Cloud computing has revolutionized the way businesses store their data. However, many companies are still struggling with how to efficiently protect those assets. A recent study conducted by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and SmallID found that less than 5% of organizations believe their cloud data is sufficiently secured.
With over 86% of organizations using multiple cloud platforms, cloud data security has quickly become a top of mind concern for more security and IT teams.
What is Cloud Data Security?
It’s important to understand that cloud data security is different from traditional data security. While the latter has been in place since the 1960s, cloud data security has only been around since the early 2000s. Traditional data security focuses on protecting data on-premise, whereas cloud data security focuses on securing your data throughout various cloud infrastructure service providers like AWS, GCP, Azure, and SaaS apps.
Cloud data security encompasses many security measures that ultimately secure and protect an organization’s most valuable cloud data.
Why do businesses need it?
More than 60% of organizations say they are likely to experience a cloud data breach in the next year. Cloud data security is no longer a luxury, but a necessity to maintain the integrity of your organization’s data.
Businesses need cloud data security to protect their sensitive data from unauthorized access and cyber threats. In the cloud, data is stored on remote servers and accessed over the internet, which can make it vulnerable to security breaches. Implementing cloud data security measures, businesses can protect their data from being accessed by unauthorized individuals or stolen by hackers.
Data breaches are detrimental to a company’s reputation, resulting in not only financial losses but loss of customer trust. On top of that, industry regulations require businesses to protect their data and may face fines and penalties when they fail to do so.
How is Data Protected in the Cloud?
Data in the cloud is protected using a variety of measures and technologies. Access controls are used to restrict access to data based on user permissions, and can be used to prevent unauthorized individuals from accessing sensitive data. Additionally, many cloud providers use monitoring and detection tools to detect and respond to potential security threats in real-time. These measures help to protect data in the cloud from unauthorized access and cyber threats. Encryption can also be used to encode data so that it can only be accessed by individuals with the proper decryption key.
The automatic deletion of files after X amount of days, weeks or months helps keep all types of data secure by reducing access time and eliminating unnecessary clutter from servers and drives. Deleting obsolete or repetitive data reduces an organization’s attack surface and improves risk posture.
SmallID’s Approach to Cloud Data Security
Cloud data security is the new normal for businesses. It’s no longer about whether or not you should use these practices but about how many of these security measures you can implement.
SmallID is an industry leader in cloud native data protection, empowering organizations with the tools to accurately and automatically discover, classify, and monitor all of their sensitive cloud data.
Through the use of advanced ML classification and AI, SmallID quickly scans data from all of your cloud storage sources, providing a centralized view of all of your data—safeguarding your most critical cloud assets.
The reliance on cloud services shows no signs of slowing down, and neither does the evolution of cybersecurity threats. Now more than ever, it’s critical to implement data security posture management (DSPM) with SmallID to accelerate data discovery with context, improve your risk posture, and reduce your attack surface to mitigate the chance of a breach.
Get started today with a free trial of SmallID.
