Adoption of Data Security on Cloud

Authored by Rahul Kumar, Country Manager & Director, WinMagic

Adoption of data security services on cloud has been gaining relevance at a rapid pace. IT professionals across have accepted its use as a part of their enterprise data security programs.

As a result, we see this as a new wave of concern for large number of companies, as they are using cloud solutions to share their data. There is no denial that the vulnerability of data has grown many folds, but the security solutions are also getting developed rapidly to deal with these and companies are working tirelessly at developing the best solutions. Regardless of the rapid increase in the adoption of cloud security, most companies don’t have the time or the money to conduct a full-fledged risk assessment.

Listed a few scenarios that companies will need to take care of in the process of dealing with risk to their data on the cloud.

Third Party Vendors

Cloud solutions deliver major productivity benefits to contractors or consultants by way of efficient file collaboration. However, such solutions allow those third-parties to walk away with confidential corporate information. When third-parties are involved, special care must be undertaken to deploy security measures that protect sensitive information but at the same time do not inhibit the ability of the contractors to make productive contributions to the organization.

Regulation or Data Control

Many companies are governed by certain industry or governmental regulations that require close control of sensitive or personally identifiable data. For these companies, cloud platform is not only the source of potential data leakage, it can also drive them out of compliance. In these situations, companies absolutely must investigate envision flexible solutions that will secure the data and provide an audit trail or reporting method to prove the data is closely controlled. Furthermore, instances where cloud security vendors are storing a company’s sensitive data that is being called upon for inspection by the government, the company is at risk of exposing data without even knowing.

Data Is Everywhere

Corporate data is increasingly mobile. It can reside in the cloud via various EFSS services and is accessed anywhere, from any device, worldwide. Although it helps nurture a more collaborative work environment, it creates a more complicated or vulnerable environment– this is especially true given the nature of today’s mobile and contract-based workforce. Intelligent key management is a transformational concept for encryption, because it enables central encryption management of cloud data and data accessed via a variety of devices and machines, all from a single management console. Most importantly, it allows the owners of the data to encrypt and manage the encryption keys. Key creation, distribution and revocation is managed entirely by the organization – there is no involvement from other third-party providers.

Evaluate Risk

Cloud Security vendors are very secure, and they have invested significantly in security so that their environments are impenetrable. However, no cloud is 100-percent secure. And all companies are susceptible to insider attacks. For that reason, the most secure option is for the data owners themselves to deploy encryption along with a way to create, keep and manage the encryption keys on cloud as well. It is clearly the most secure option, it’s just a question of knowing whether the option is needed.