In 2022, it can be hard to feel good about your data security. Let’s understand what is cloud data storage binarymove? Data breaches happen all the time – in just the third quarter of 2022, 15 million of them happened worldwide. And if you’re running a small business, you could be a bigger target than you realize – small businesses are 350 percent more likely than large companies to experience cyber attacks.
You must take cloud security seriously if your small business uses cloud storage. It’s not just your cloud storage provider’s responsibility. It’s yours, too. Hackers will try to access your cloud data. Here’s what to do to keep it safe.
Store Only What You Need
A security breach can’t compromise information that isn’t stored on your cloud storage. Don’t put information into online cloud storage that doesn’t need to be there. Before you store anything on the cloud, review whether it needs to be stored online or not. Do multiple employees need access to it? Do they need to work on the document collaboratively? If you don’t have a purpose in storing something in the cloud, use data minimization principles and keep it offline.
Ensure Cloud Storage Is Password-Protected
You should ensure employees provide a username and password to access cloud storage.
However, login credentials can be stolen during phishing attacks or breached using brute force attacks. To add an extra security layer, ensure everyone is accessing their cloud storage through a virtual private network or VPN. A VPN can encrypt your data as it’s being transmitted, providing an additional layer of protection. The VPN itself should be password-protected, too.
Use Multi-Factor Authentication
Password protection isn’t the end-all, be-all of cybersecurity for your cloud storage. As previously mentioned, passwords can be stolen or cracked. You should use multi-factor authentication (MFA) to help keep hackers out of your cloud storage.
MFA requires you to provide an additional identity confirmation upon login, above and beyond your username and password. A common means of MFA is to provide a code that has been texted to your cell phone. MFA can be either device based (using your phone or other devices to confirm your identity) or hardware-based (using a dongle or USB stick to confirm your identity). Either way, it makes it harder for hackers to get it, so it’s a good idea to implement it to keep your cloud storage safe.
Train Your Employees
What is the most important element of cloud security? It’s training your employees to know the importance of cloud security and what they can do to keep the company’s cloud storage safe. They need to know how to avoid phishing scams and what to do in the case of ransomware. Train your employees on digital security and retrain them regularly to fill in gaps in their knowledge and keep the issue fresh in their minds.
Protect Your Devices
When devices are compromised by malware or ransomware, a secure connection isn’t enough to protect your data. You need to ensure your devices are always up to date because security updates include patches for vulnerabilities that the developers have identified or hackers have already learned to exploit. Use the most recent version of the operating system your device runs. Security patches should always be applied as soon as vendors release them. Install a good antivirus and antimalware programs to keep your devices safe from cyber threats and hackers.
Create Backups
Data theft isn’t the only risk you face when using cloud storage. Cyber attacks could also result in the loss of your data. Not only that, but service interruptions or other events could make cloud storage temporarily inaccessible. Always store offline backups of the data you keep in the cloud. Whether you’re simply losing access to the cloud storage while they do maintenance or some kind of breach event has led to the corruption or theft of your data, you’ll be glad you had your data backed up offline.
Choose a User-Friendly Cloud Service
Cloud applications can be a real boon to collaboration, but not if employees don’t want to use them. Your cloud service should be easy to use and accessible, so employees are willing to use it. Otherwise, they might turn to public cloud services that don’t have the security features you need, putting your data at risk.
Cloud storage is a great way to keep your company’s data accessible to everyone who needs it and foster team-wide collaboration. But without the right security protocols, things could go very wrong very fast. Don’t put your company data at risk. Prioritize cloud security.
Feature image: Pixabay
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