Keep Your Cloud Enterprise Data Safe and Secure on the Cloud

This is a writing sample from Scripted writer Curt Smothers

You data needs to be safe, but you rely on convenient-but-vulnerable cloud applications. Here's how you can have safe data on an easy-to-use platform If you use the cloud, it's possible someone is after your data. Whether by hackers, makers of malware, thieves and identity bandits, ill-intended cyber criminals have new methods of attack. How can you keep your data secure? Be aware and be proactive. Cloud safety involves an active partnership between you and your cloud service provider. In this agreement, you must take a great deal of responsibility. After all, this is your data and your reputation at stake. The following four areas of concern provide the foundation of cloud security.

1. Access Management

According to Cloud Security Alliance.org, it's the managing of access between different accounts on different applications that poses the biggest risk and challenge for IT professions. This includes:
- Bringing in new users and denying access to old users.
- Authenticating user access in a reliable manner.
- Managing trusted user profiles and establishing an audit trail.
- Ensuring compliance with internal and regulatory requirements.

2. Sufficient Bandwidth for Latency-Sensitive Applications

When you have an office with a multitude of users making use of various high latency applications and web utilities, things are bound to go wrong once in awhile. To keep your network running smoothly, despite various users tugging on bandwidth, it's important to consider the following:
- Latency is just another word for delay. So for a cloud service or application that requires low latency, system architects might need to work around the wait time inherent in security filters and be mindful of the considerations involved in physical separation.
- If the aforementioned workaround includes local replication of a large customer database, for example, suddenly you have yet another security vulnerability to worry about.
- Sufficient bandwidth helps, but it's not the whole solution, especially when provider-to-user compatibility is involved.

3 . SSL Infrastructure Improvements

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is the secure technology that sets up encrypted links between the cloud server and the browser customers use to access it. Cloud providers must supply clients with SSL encryption that has:
- Strong authentication and authorization protocols.
- Secure customer access and service management.
- Automated tools for creating and using SSL keys and certificates.

4. Auditing At Each Stage of Cloud Adoption

Cloud users need to know the risks to their business and how to manage those risks by assessing and educating themselves about the following:
- How the provider controls access to the company's data.
- What safeguards the provider has in place for regulatory compliance.
- Where the company data will reside physically, and in what jurisdiction.
- How the company data is segregated from the cloud provider's other customers.
- What safeguards are in effect to restore the system without data loss in the event of a problem.
- The viability and future of the cloud provider and how they would return the company data if the provider goes out of business.
- Whether traditional IT controls will remain in effect in the new cloud environment.
The cloud doesn't have to be a risky, mixed blessing. Users just need to be security conscious and hire reputable and trade-tested providers.