What Is Cloud Security?
Cloud Security encompasses the technology that keeps data, applications and services private and secure. As a whole, it includes everything from ensuring that sensitive information is never exposed to unauthorized users, to keeping up with the speed at which IT systems change and expanding. It also encompasses a range of tools that monitor for vulnerabilities and prevent data loss.
There are a wide variety of threats to cloud security. They can take the form of malicious DDoS attacks that cripple a company’s online services, or of a data breach where customer records fall into the wrong hands, leading to financial woes and a damaged reputation. More subtle risks include misconfigurations of cloud solutions, which can lead to unauthorized access or data exposure.
As the threat landscape continues to grow and evolve, companies need cloud security that is as comprehensive as possible. They should ensure their provider offers encryption of both the application and transport layers, strong authentication and authorization procedures (least privilege principle), continuous risk management monitoring, airtight file sharing, and more.
They should be able to choose from a range of security tools that seamlessly integrate with their CI/CD pipeline. That way, their existing IT teams can get ahead of threats without slowing down end user access. The best cloud security vendors offer integrated suites that let you shift to a preventative stance without having to hire new staff. Akamai and Check Point, for example, provide products that simplify traffic flows, centralize management and harden the entire ecosystem at a fraction of the cost of traditional hardware-based solutions.