The development and innovations in the technology field play a significant role in the growth of e-commerce, especially in this digital age. The major upsides in this case include the availability of wider markets, convenience, and reduced market costs. However, it’s not a cakewalk and digitization has got its own share of downsides as well. Note that the rise in cybercrimes has become a major reason for concern for both startups and established businesses.
In fact, several well-known and reputed enterprises such as LinkedIn, Yahoo, Facebook, etc., had to face political and civil outrage for their incapability to uphold their user confidentiality or privacy. Note that these companies have become victims of successful cyberattacks. Even though no one is exclusively immune to such hacking issues, storing your client’s confidential data and company in the cloud is regarded as a relatively safer choice regardless of whether you run a small company or a high-end one.
Furthermore, just transferring your sensitive data to the cloud alone will not enhance its security. Rather, you will have to adapt some security measures and precautions as well. In order to help you out, below are some of the best tips that you may consider to secure your company data in the cloud.
Understand the significance of internet security
The first step to achieve or design a flawless security policy is to understand the significance of internet security for your business. Rather, the aftermath of successful cyberattacks. Below are some of the few reasons that you might want to consider.
- If your company data or client information is hacked by cybercriminals, this is due to a poor security policy. This will not only put you in some legal troubles but will also negatively impact your brand reputation and, thereby, your market value.
- Another issue that can occur if your company became a victim of hacking scandals is heavy fines from the government. Note that you will have to provide fair monetary compensation to your clients who are affected by data leaks. The compensation amount or fine will be determined by the court.
- To survive in the competitive business field, you will have to implement some new and unique strategies. Hence, if your business secrets are leaked, it can lead the way to your company’s destruction.
Analyze the behavior of your employees
Do you know that your employees are the weak links in the cloud computing platform? Most hackers tend to target your employees first in order to gain access into your company network. To avoid this, conduct shadow IT tests of the systems in your company regularly. This way, you can check the activities of your staff and the cloud sites they are accessing.
Check whether the information or data stored in every cloud site that they access is accurate or should even be there at all. When it comes to the latter, more sensitive data such as business secrets and client information must be encrypted before transferring to data protection sites or apps. Needless to mention, this enhances the confidentiality of your data. However, this is not a must-do task if access to the particular cloud site is restricted to one or two employees.
Choose your cloud service providers carefully
Since the cloud platform is extremely popular these days, you can find several cloud service providers in the field. Without any doubt, every cloud service provider in the market claims to have the best services, especially when it comes to data management and security. Of course, not everyone will be a veteran or trustworthy. To tackle this, try to meet several cloud providers and shortlist a few. Then, go through their user reviews to zero in on the right option.
Better, if you can contact any of their existing or former clients. Furthermore, the parliament has introduced some laws, known as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), to secure the data of online users. Make sure that the policy of your cloud provider complies with these laws.
Most importantly, ensure that your chosen provider possesses all the necessary certifications issued by respectable bodies in the field such as SOC (Service Organization Control) report, ISO 27001 certificate, etc. That being said, one of the credible certification bodies that you can rely on in this case is the Cloud Security Alliance. This agency provides a star certificate to the cloud companies that adhere to industry standards.
Secure your server using strong passwords
One of the main factors that can make you an easy target for hackers is using poor or not strong enough passwords. Similarly, not changing your default password is also a big risk in this case. The worst case is keeping the same password for multiple platforms since it makes it easier for hackers to steal all your information instantly once they figure out your password. To avoid such issues, it’s recommended that you create a strong and different password for your important files and sites. For this, design a password that features a combination of alphabets, numbers, characters, symbols, etc.
Of course, some people may find it challenging to remember all these passwords, especially when they’re complicated. Thankfully, you can easily address this issue by using password managers such as RoboForm and LastPass. Besides, as far as extremely important and sensitive data is concerned, you cannot rely solely on strong passwords since sophisticated hackers can break it at times.
In such cases, rely on MFA or on a multi-factor authentication scheme. Hence, anybody accessing a site or file will have to submit a one-time password apart from the regular password and username authentication. Note that OTPs are usually sent via SMS, voice calls, or emails to the email id or mobile number that you provided during the initial processing of account registration.
