As organizations adopt a hybrid work infrastructure, ensuring cloud security is crucial for securing data storage and operations at organizations with hybrid or multi-cloud environments.  

Cloud security best practices help protect sensitive data, mitigate risks, and enhance overall security postures. This involves following key strategies such as implementing zero trust frameworks, working closely with cloud providers, and maintaining stringent access controls. Securing the cloud can ensure that businesses are safeguarding their cloud-based assets, ensuring compliance with industry standards, and maintaining customer trust. This article will discuss some of the best practices for cloud security such as encrypting data, security audits, employee training, secure endpoints, identity and access management, pentesting, and more.

Businesses are quickly looking to scale their operations and make their business accessible to their growing workforce which is made significantly more possible with cloud technologies as opposed to traditional in-house data centers. The most concerning matter, is the cloud secure? As organizations transition more of their workloads and data to cloud environments, security teams often encounter challenges in maintaining a clear view of all their assets and activities, consistently enforcing security policies, and responding to threats in real time.

Because of its nuance and complexity, cloud security could be difficult to manage. Similarly, an organization’s shift to the cloud could present the security team with new challenges in and of itself and inability to address these challenges could cause operational disruption. This section will discuss consequences, recent breaches, and touch on some best practices of cloud security.

If your cloud infrastructure isn’t secure, the risks are significant:

• Data Breaches: Sensitive information, such as customer data and intellectual property, can be exposed to cybercriminals.

• Loss of Trust: Clients and customers may lose confidence in your ability to protect their data.

• Financial Penalties: Non-compliance with regulations can result in hefty fines and legal consequences.

• Business Disruptions: A breach can lead to operational downtime, loss of revenue, and costly recovery processes.

Only 23% of organizations report full visibility into their cloud environments. (Cloud Security Alliance) Making it increasingly difficult to spot threats and patch vulnerabilities.

Recent high-profile breaches of cloud databases underscore the importance of security. For example, incidents involving misconfigured cloud environments have led to the exposure of millions of personal records.  

MOVEit Transfer Breach: A major breach occurred in Progress Software’s MOVEit Transfer tool, widely used for sharing large files. The Russia-linked Clop group exploited a vulnerability, allowing unauthorized access to sensitive databases.  

T-Mobile API Breach: A flaw in T-Mobile’s API exposed the personal information including names, emails, phone numbers, and service plan details.  

ChatGPT Data Breach: A misconfiguration in ChatGPT’s cloud infrastructure led to a breach, exposing personal information and chat logs.

Yum Brands: A phishing attack targeted Yum Brands, resulting in the exposure of sensitive employee data.  

These cases highlight the critical need to follow cloud data security best practices to avoid such vulnerabilities.

1. Encrypt Data

One of the core best practices for cloud security is encrypting data both at rest and in transit. Encryption ensures that even if a cybercriminal gains access to the data, it remains unreadable without the encryption key. This helps keep sensitive information, such as personal or financial data, secure.

2. Conduct Regular Security Audits

Performing frequent security audits is essential for maintaining strong security postures. These audits allow organizations to identify weaknesses in their cloud infrastructure, assess compliance with security regulations, and detect areas where security policies can be improved.

3. Use cloud detection and response solutions

Security tools that provide detection and response for the cloud often lack the automation and scalability needed to respond in real-time to threats.

The cloud requires agile security measures for teams to detect and respond to a variety of threats including:  business-specific novel AI threats, user threats like misconfigurations, and unknown threats often while contending with limited skilled resources.  

For more information on cloud detection and response visit our Darktrace / CLOUD detection and response page.

4. Monitor misconfigurations

Cloud misconfigurations, such as exposed databases or improper access controls, can lead to severe security breaches. Continuous monitoring is essential to detect and correct these issues before they expose sensitive data.  

You can choose to use automated tools provided by your cloud provider to scan for potential vulnerabilities. However, ensuring you have the best cloud security solutions to help enhance your visibility over misconfigurations is key in setting up real-time alerts for immediate remediation. This will strengthen your overall security posture and keeping your data secure.

Visit our Darktrace / CLOUD product page to learn more on how you can have visibility over misconfigurations in your cloud.

5. Understand and meet cloud compliance

Many industries, especially those deemed critical infrastructure by governing bodies, must adhere to cybersecurity compliance regulations. Specifically for cloud environments compliance could involve identifying and prioritizing risks in the form of misconfigurations or weaknesses & vulnerabilities.

These regulations are particularly important for organizations that hold sensitive client data like credit card information, health information, and more.

For more on cloud compliance visit our Darktrace / CLOUD compliance webpage.

6. Identity and Access Management (IAM)

IAM systems control who can access your cloud resources and what they can do once they have access. Enforcing the principle of least privilege, where users only get access to what they need, enhances cloud security best practices and reduces the risk of unauthorized access.

7. Implement Zero-trust Architecture

Adopting a zero-trust approach ensures that no one, inside or outside the network, is trusted by default. This includes constantly verifying identities, limiting access, and segmenting your network to reduce the risk of lateral movement by attackers. Zero trust aligns well with modern cloud security needs by securing every layer of your environment.

8. Secure APIs

Many cloud services rely on APIs to function. Ensuring that APIs are securely designed, have proper authentication, and are protected from attacks such as DDoS or man-in-the-middle attacks helps maintain a secure cloud posture.

9. Ensure you have visibility in the cloud

Organizations struggle with inadequate visibility into their cloud architectures, making it difficult to track data and access across various platforms. This lack of visibility can be attributed to the distributed nature of cloud services and the reliance on multiple platforms, which can obscure where data is stored and how it is being accessed.

Many security tools are not built for the cloud-native environment, leading to insufficient visibility into cloud operations. This makes it challenging to comprehensively track and understand the configuration and behavior of cloud resources.

Finding a solution that shows your cloud environment in real-time is essential to continuously monitor and secure workloads and unify your SecOps and DevOps teams. Read more about cloud visibility here.

10. Look beyond CSPM and CNAPP

To truly secure cloud environments, organizations must adopt a comprehensive approach that goes beyond the capabilities of CSPM and CNAPP solutions.  

A holistic approach that natively integrates these tools with other security measures, proactive practices, and human expertise is essential for achieving comprehensive cloud security.  

A comprehensive cloud security strategy includes real-time threat detection, contextual awareness, proactive measures, and unified multi-cloud security. This is essential for achieving robust protection against evolving cyber threats.

By integrating these elements, organizations can ensure their cloud environments are secure, resilient, and capable of supporting their business operations effectively.

Darktrace / CLOUD is intelligent cloud security powered by Self-Learning AI that delivers continuous, context-aware visibility and monitoring of cloud assets to unlock real-time detection and response and proactive cloud risk management.

Detect and respond to novel threats: Self-Learning AI™ continuously monitors activity across cloud assets, containers, APIs, and users correlated with detailed identity and network context to rapidly detect malicious activity while Autonomous Response neutralizes malicious activity with surgical accuracy while preventing disruption to cloud.

Understand your complex
cloud footprint: Achieve real-time visibility into all cloud assets and architectures with speed, flexibility, and scale across hybrid, multi-cloud environments.

Proactive cloud protection & risk management: Prioritize your biggest risks based on a deep understanding of your unique business context.

Learn more about Darktrace / CLOUD by visiting reading our blogs on cloud security here.