What Is Cloud Security?
Cloud Security is comprised of the policies, controls and technologies that protect data and applications stored in the cloud. These include strong, granular identity and access management (IAM) policies, the principle of least privilege and multifactor authentication, encryption at rest, in use and in motion, and ongoing monitoring to detect and respond to threats. It is also important to have strong cloud visibility, which includes identifying cloud infrastructure and services and the relationships between them.
A good Cloud Security solution should also incorporate security intelligence and threat feeds into its processes, automatically assessing the nature of attacks and how they’re targeting businesses’ environments. These intelligence-driven tools are important in preventing the vast majority of cyberattacks that lead to breaches in the first place, such as brute force logins or other attempts to break into data using stolen credentials.
Additionally, a solid Cloud Security solution should also provide secure and flexible access controls to limit the impact of unauthorized devices on cloud-based applications. This is important in ensuring the right balance of security and user experience, as many users don’t have a good understanding of the differences between their onpremises technology stack and the cloud services they use. For this reason, it’s also critical to implement tools such as cloud workload protection platforms (CWPP) and cloud access security brokers (CASB). These help identify and protect sensitive or regulated data as it moves through, between and out of cloud apps, and can help prevent information from being exposed by hackers or accidentally uploaded or downloaded from unauthorized devices.