How does an enterprise assess cloud service security?

As the popularity of cloud services increases, companies must work with it to decide what can be put on the cloud and how to ensure other security.

Cloud computing has gained more and more attention from enterprises. Does it mean that cloud services are safe enough for businesses?

Although my answer is "appropriate," it is critical for security managers to understand that a generalized negative answer is not an acceptable answer. Executives and other business leaders are attracted to the benefits of cost and convenience provided by cloud-based vendors. However, before any action is taken, the security team needs to know what systems and data can be hosted in the cloud, before which team members can judge the security of the cloud service.

In addition, organizations need to make decisions about what can be put in the cloud and what cannot. Once these benchmarks are resolved, the project manager can assess the pros and cons of using the cloud vendor's special features.

Most importantly, the security team needs to know what systems and data are in the cloud. One of the most significant negative effects of the cloud is that any employee holding a corporate credit card can become his own buyer. This kind of shadow it scenario leads to worse situations, but it is unknown. If the data has migrated to the cloud, but no one knows, security will not be able to properly review the vendor, or continue to monitor the supply performance. Blind security teams cannot ensure application security.

After monitoring to ensure that unknown data does not depend on cloud service security, the organization needs to decide what data and systems they want to host in the cloud. Management requirements may describe what can be put in the cloud and what not. There may be tougher demand for corporate policy.

Organizations looking for a starting point can look at the existing data classification policies of their businesses. Policies on how different types of data must be handled may disqualify some from using cloud vendors ' information and functionality. These same protocols may also highlight other features that are appropriate for cloud-based solutions. For real help, policies may need to be extended to create cloud-specific IT departments and line of Business (LOB) guides.

Relying on cloud vendors is good and bad. Cloud service security can be sacrificed for the IT team to accept. All cloud computing involves a lot of control because there are others who are responsible for opening services, running and maintaining servers and software. Cloud services are also an attractive target for attackers, because a successful breach provides a large amount of access to the organization's data.

However, in some cases, cloud options may be more secure than local. Qualified cloud providers already have sophisticated security operations such as threat intelligence, backup, patching, intrusion detection, and response. Security managers need to be honest with themselves about how well their organization functions and other mission-critical tasks are running.

Cloud providers can take advantage of economies of scale, which are also very attractive to small and medium-sized enterprises, while also adding value to corporate organizations. In addition, some organizations uninstall some business processes from cloud vendors, reducing the scale of compliance work, such as external device connectivity.

Cloud vendors can provide a lot of value to IT departments and LOBs, but the decision to migrate services and data cloud needs to be cautious. There are deterministic processes that can help prevent the creation of shadow IT operations and help prevent the spread of data. With enough advance planning, organizations can take advantage of the benefits provided by cloud vendors without causing IT operations to run out of control.