Long considered permissive and risky for data, the cloud has since become stronger and the major CSPs (Cloud Service Providers) have built more reliable and solid platforms. However, the risks remain and you must identify the good security practices that must be included in your partner’s specifications before hosting all your data with them. To do this, here are 5 rules that your cloud provider must respect:
Centralization
A good content management platform in the cloud must offer to centralize as much information as possible, so as to be able to control it and reduce as much as possible the attack surface to protect. The entire arsenal of defenses against intrusions can thus be concentrated on this perimeter. In addition, users and terminals accessing the platform can be easily identified and the use of data will be controlled thanks to the important granularity of authorizations.
Confidentiality
If unauthorized access to your company’s data must obviously be perfectly locked, the use of the information by the supplier must be framed in such a way as to allow the monitoring of the state of service. The consent between you and your supplier must be completely transparent about the collection, use, storage or transfer of information to third parties. To ensure this, you will need to carefully review your provider’s privacy policy, including a look at the “privacy by design” nature of the offering.
Compliance
Each company operates in a specific regulatory environment, with its own constraints at different levels: internal policy, international law, sector-specific regulations, national legalization, etc. Before choosing a cloud solution, you should ensure that your provider has the appropriate checks and balances for your business, and that it keeps a constant watch on regulatory changes.
Governance
Ensuring effective and consistent governance is a decisive key to guaranteeing the security of your data in the cloud. The provider must therefore be able to offer you the possibility to easily regulate your access, editing or deletion rights, but also the ability to delegate certain powers, to automate the application of security policies or to log events.
Ecosystem
Innovations in hacking are plentiful, and while vendors strive to offer appropriate countermeasures, there is no impenetrable solution in terms of defense. Faced with the diversity of risks, it is therefore necessary to opt for a combination of various solutions. Beyond the protection features, it is a real security ecosystem that your cloud provider must offer, especially if it aims to allow all your employees to share files that are sometimes critical for the business.
Related article: What is cloud computing?