Cloud Infrastructure Security: 5 Best Practices to Secure Your Sensitive Data

Cloud infrastructure security is critical to protecting sensitive data in the cloud. As more companies shift their operations to the cloud, protecting corporate data becomes concerning. How to keep your cloud data secure and sealed away from hackers? There is no such thing as absolute safety. Rather, you can take the extra steps, going out of your usual way to tick off all the possibilities of data breaches to safeguard your cloud infrastructure safety as much as possible. In this blog, we’ll show you the seven essential practices for protecting sensitive data in the cloud effectively and casually.

What is infrastructure security in cloud computing?

It refers to the measurement and practices implemented to secure the underlying technology infrastructure of a cloud computing platform. This includes servers, networking gear, hypervisors, and virtual machines, but not limited to. Infrastructure security prevents cloud data from unauthorized access, modification, theft, and other risks. In an effort to keep cloud infrastructure out of attacks, firewalls, encryption, access controls, and intrusion detection systems are often in use.

The infrastructure security universe includes cloud resource configuration, software, firmware updates, secure data transmission protocols, and disaster recovery and business continuity planning to keep cloud services running after a security compromise, natural disaster, or other disruption.

Cloud computing services depend on infrastructure security to host and access applications and data. Infrastructure security breaches can lead to data loss, theft, service disruption, and reputational damage.
To shield the cloud resources and data out of sight is a complicated task due to being a multidimensional model.

5 Best Practices to Secure Your Sensitive Data

To protect sensitive information from illegal intrusive access, these practices below can give you a helping hand by implementing encryption, access controls, and regular monitoring.

Cloud safely access

Being cautious with cloud access!

Yes, we’ve said it, and if we may, we would like to repeat it repeatedly!!! You should always know WHO you have granted access to. Keeping a log of the user’s activities and monitoring it might help you spot suspicious behavior and take appropriate action. Strong passwords and multifactor authentication can restrict access to just authorized users.
Come up with an access level structure, it’s better to have numerous layers of security cover-up, and it would be much harder to break through. Access to sensitive data and cloud resources must also be restricted to a specific group of authorized individuals only. According to role-based access control (RBAC), users should only have access to the resources and data required for their job duties. Access privileges must be frequently reviewed and updated.

Meeting the IT compliance requirements

Have these below made their way into your checklist yet? If not, it’s time to follow the “regulations”; they are there for a reason.

• Up-to-date with established frameworks and standards: You need to stay updated with changes to laws and regulations and adjust your policies and procedures accordingly. Qualifying for these standards and frameworks means your system is up to par with international data security standards, making your system stand out among the competitors in the customer’s mind.
• Conduct regular assessments: Being qualified once does not mean you shall always be. Standard check-in with your security system is an absolute must-practice to watch out for gaps or vulnerabilities.
• Monitor and audit systems: Regular audits must be carried out to ensure that policies and procedures are followed, and IT systems must be frequently checked for compliance and security risks.

Employee monitoring

Providing transparency with employee monitoring can help identify unusual activity and address security risks. Employee monitoring software can be implemented along with clear policies regarding monitoring. Analytics can identify unusual activity, and employees can be educated about monitoring policies.

How to make this work for your business? Take this as a reference:

• Implement employee monitoring software
• Establish clear policies regarding monitoring
• Use analytics to identify unusual activity
• Educate employees about monitoring policies
• Use monitoring to identify and address security risks

Educate employees

Educating employees against phishing may sound silly and out of line for doing it in the tech business background. Don’t make assumptions that since you’re software quality assurance companies, everyone shall be well-off, knowing all the tricky and suspected links and files in their inbox. Need to know how to kick-start a session? Follow these recommendations we have as a guideline:

• Regular training: Employees should get frequent phishing training. Training should cover identifying suspicious emails, verifying sender identification, and not clicking on dangerous links or downloading attachments from unknown sources.
• Conduct simulated phishing attacks to educate employees: Run simulated phishing attacks and put your staff in action. These simulations can gauge workers’ awareness and point out potential improvement areas.
• Encourage reporting suspicious emails or activity: The IT department should be informed immediately of any suspicious emails or behavior, and employees should be encouraged to do the same. This can help stop additional damage and give IT time to look into it and take necessary action.
• Implement email filters to block suspicious emails: email filters can be utilized to restrict known malicious emails from getting to employees’ inboxes.

Respond to security incidents promptly

Act as quickly as possible whenever an incident happens! This minimizes the damage and lowers the risk of compromising your complete database.

• Have a response strategy in place: Make a plan outlining what to do in the event of a security breach; a step-by-step procedure can do, especially in an emergency, when everyone is either confused or panicking. To guarantee a well-coordinated reaction, assign roles and duties.
• Ensure the incident response chain of command is transparent: Establish who is in charge of making final decisions during an incident and make sure everyone on staff is aware of their responsibilities.
  Test the incident response plan regularly: Conduct regular drills and exercises to test the plan’s effectiveness and identify areas for improvement.
• Use threat intelligence to identify potential incidents: Monitor the latest threat intelligence sources to identify potential incidents before they occur.
• Conduct regular vulnerability assessments and penetration testing: Identify and address vulnerabilities in your security infrastructure before attackers can exploit them.
• Implement backups and disaster recovery solutions: Back up critical data regularly and have a plan for recovering from a security incident.

Role of Software Quality Testing (SQT) and Software Quality Assurance (SQA) in cloud infrastructure security

Cloud computing has become popularly known for its flexible data storage and management. Security has become a primary responsibility as more sensitive data is transmitted to the cloud. That’s when Software Quality Assurance and Software Quality Testing come into place to aid and secure cloud infrastructure.

Role of Software Quality Testing (SQT) and Software Quality Assurance (SQA)

Software Quality Testing (SQT) involves evaluating software applications to determine whether or not they meet defined quality standards. SQT plays a significant role in certifying that the cloud environment is secure and that the software components inside it adhere to the essential quality standards in the context of cloud infrastructure security. SQT and SQA entail testing the software components to identify any weaknesses or vulnerabilities attackers may exploit. SQT helps establish the effective implementation of security controls and protection of the cloud infrastructure from potential threats. While SQA enables cloud infrastructure security to act in accordance with the presets security policies and protects against threats.

Additionally, it can explore and suggest areas for improvement in the security architecture of the cloud environment. Security and compliance testing can discover cloud environment vulnerabilities and assure compliance with industry and regulatory standards.

How does SHIFT ASIA incorporate SQA and SQT in cloud infrastructure security?

SHIFT ASIA acknowledges the importance of Software Quality Assurance (SQA) and Software Quality Testing (SQT) in ensuring cloud infrastructure security. As a leading provider of assessing cloud services security, SHIFT ASIA strictly follows the 5 best practices mentioned above while incorporating SQA and SQT into its security procedures to safeguard our client’s sensitive data and assets.

SHIFT ASIA adapts quality assurance techniques throughout the software development lifecycle to seal in security. Regular security audits, vulnerability assessments, and compliance testing detect and mitigate security issues.
SHIFT ASIA’s SQT method evaluates software applications for quality. This entails assessing cloud software for vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit. Performance and functional testing are done regularly to ensure cloud infrastructure performance and security. If you are looking for consultancy regarding cloud security, don’t hesitate to contact our team for your assistance. We’re here to help!