Are you worried about your cloud security certification? Here’s how to conduct a cloud security assessment!
Businesses and organizations worldwide are now adapting to cloud security certification for running their day-to-day tasks. Simply because, cloud computing saves a lot of time, money, and effort that goes into these tasks.
However, data security in cloud computing is a major risk. It is because everything is available on the cloud, organizations are worried that it can lead to more risks due to security breaches. In a survey, around 80% of organizations and businesses indicated that in the near future, cloud security will be among the top issues that will be discussed in the public and private sectors who opt for services like #Azure or Google cloud services.
What is an Azure cloud security assessment?
The #Azure cloud security assessment is basically a set of practices that involves testing your cloud security to combat security challenges in cloud computing.
Although there is a lot of debate on what is cloud security and what steps are more efficient to ensure that businesses and organizations are safe on the cloud. However, security assessments like #Azure provide a roadmap to assess the security structures in place. It is very important to ensure that your security structures are properly in place and safe enough for you to upload all your data to cloud storage.
Cloud security assessments for Azure
When businesses are carrying out a cloud security assessment for Azure — there are a few steps that you need to follow in order to conduct a successful cloud security assessment.
- Visibility assessment
As the name suggests, the first step of cloud security assessment for #Azure is to conduct an ability assessment. For an ideal situation, your cloud management service should have deep visibility across all platforms.
It is because when there is less visibility, businesses and organizations often lose track of their assets and when you do not know about the existence of those assets, you fail to protect them. Therefore, the first step of a cloud security assessment is to make sure that the gaps are visible so you can take steps to fill them.
- Identity assessment
The next step that you need to take during a cloud security assessment is to make sure that you are aware of the identities of the people that are linked with your cloud. According to a survey, In the coming years around 75% of the security breaches in cloud computing will result because of personal non-personal identities. Therefore, this step is really necessary when you are conducting a security assessment.
For example, businesses need to review how much access is granted to certain individuals in an organization. For example, if someone works for an organization on tasks that are miscellaneous, they do not need permission to access all the data that there is on the cloud. Therefore, to ensure that the security structures are in place, you should review the permissions that have been granted to the workers of that organization.
- Data risk assessment
In the past, organizations had to hire security personnel to make sure that they are safe to carry out their daily activities. However, now and in the coming years — the major risks that organizations and businesses will face will be because of data.
It is because all the data that we store on the cloud is somewhat exposed for exploitation. Therefore, the next step in your security assessment will be to assess how your data is addressed and what you can do to fill those gaps so that your data is secure.
It is very important because data is very crucial for any organization and if it ends up with someone who exploits it for different reasons, it can pose a big challenge for companies. On top of this, people are also very particular about the data and how to say if it is on the cloud, therefore a security assessment will keep these risks in check.
- Evaluation of the configuration
The next step in the security assessment will be to ensure the configuration of your data. It is because the data on the cloud can migrate across platforms, this is why it is better that you carry out an evaluation of the configurations to ensure that the identities are in place
- Clearance
Once all the steps have been executed successfully, the last step should be to check everything once again to ensure that the security assessment did not miss out on anything.
Best Practices for Azure Cloud Security
Although, it is good to conduct security assessments every once in a while, to ensure that the data is secure on cloud computing. However, security assessments need a lot of time and resource allocation. Therefore, organizations should put some practices in place to ensure that there are fewer areas of concern whenever you need to conduct a security assessment.
One of the best practices for #Azure cloud security is to invest your money in good products. For example, make sure that your computers are equipped with malware protection. So that whenever there’s a tiny security breach, it is handled immediately.
Similarly, organizations should carry out workshops for their employees to teach them how to conduct themselves when they are working on the cloud. For example, how to stay safe from phishing links.
Takeaway
Cloud computing will be integrated into most organizations in the coming future, therefore it is important for organizations to set some practices in place that can ensure that their data is secure.
It is because cloud computing is prone to cyber-attacks. So, services like Azure have security assessment strategies in place that can help identify the gaps in an organization’s security so that they can be filled. These steps can cater to security challenges in cloud computing. Organizations can opt for cloud security certification before integrating their workload into cloud computing for maximum security.