Do you fear the security issues that surround cloud services? With guidance, you can transition to public, private, and hybrid cloud.

Finance. Banking. Law. Healthcare.

Compliance laws and regulations constrain these industries. As a result, many of these businesses shy away from cloud services. This hesitation occurs even though cloud services offer greater scalability and lower costs than on-premise infrastructure.

Despite these fears, the move to the cloud is happening. Businesses who don't make this move risk being eclipsed by their competition.

The goal isn't to stop this move; it's to figure out how to use cloud services as safely as possible. Take these steps to ensure the safety of your business information:

Enforce internal security policies. Hackers and cyber thieves prefer to go after the low-hanging fruit. Some of the simplest security measures can also be the most effective. Require strong passwords and regular password changes, enforce multi-factor authentication, respond quickly and effectively to device loss and theft, reduce the use of shadow IT, and be sure all your software and apps are up-to-date on all security patches and fixes. ÿÿ

Perform a security audit. Find out where your vulnerabilities are before the hackers do. This isn?t a one-time task. Plan for a security audit any time you add systems to your business or there are major upgrades, patches, or changes to your software and apps. Perform audits on any services you move to the cloud.

Create strong backup and recovery plans. Malicious attacks, human error, natural disasters?any of these can harm your business. Having backed up data and a plan to restore it in case of disaster is necessary. But having a plan is not enough. Test the plan well before you need it to discover any errors or gaps in recovery.

Segregate and separate data.ÿUse secure gateways where the enterprise and the cloud interact. Decide where data is safest:ÿprivate cloud, public cloud, or on-premise. Base your decision on the confidentiality and sensitivity of that data, as well as any regulations that govern it.

Authorization and access control.ÿWho can get to your data is far more important than where it is stored. Many refer to this as the principle of least privilege. This means user accounts come with the least privileges required to do the associated job.

If you?re in a highly-regulated industry and hesitant to use cloud services contact us here at Magenium +1 630-786-5900 or info@magenium.com. We can navigate you through this process and keep your business safe and secure in the cloud.