If your small business uses the cloud, then security is of the utmost importance.
With information breaches, viruses, and cyber-crime on the rise, ensuring your cloud is safe and secure is the only way to protect your small business and your customers.
When it comes to secure systems, here are just a few cloud security measures to keep in mind in order to protect your business:
Importance of Cloud Security
Online security is something that should be on every small business’s mind, especially when the cloud is involved. Protecting your business’s livelihood and your customers’ private information takes proper cloud security measures.
With the growing importance of cloud security in the small business world, the U.S Department of Defense has released a new Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide for use by all businesses using the cloud.
The DoD guide covers everything from protecting proprietary data to following proven cloud security models.
There are also specific policies and requirements in the guide that help certain industries take the necessary moves to secure their online practices.
With that said, there are a number of security measures your small business should keep in mind when utilizing cloud technology.
They include:
Data Storage Locations
Storing data and other business information in a safe location is all part of cloud security.
As the article, “How can you be sure your information is secure in the cloud? asks, well, it starts with knowing exactly where your data is stored.
The cloud is an offsite framework for storing and managing your data from any location.
Asking your cloud service provider the location of their servers and how your business data is differentiated from other’s data is an important part of the cloud security process.
If answers aren’t clear or the service provider doesn’t have dedicated servers, find another cloud provider.
Security Procedures
Your small business’s cloud activities are only a safe as your cloud provider’s safety procedures.
It’s important to ask your cloud provider how they handle safety procedures at their facility. Security measures and procedures should be mentioned in your service agreement.
These security procedures should include anti-viral updates, security protocols during system outages, security monitoring procedures, and estimated recovery times when data loss occurs.
By knowing your cloud service provider’s security procedures in advance, you’ll have a clear course of action to take when issues arise.
Backup Strategies
When your small business’s data exists on the cloud, you can rest assured all of your information is backed up. However, not all backup strategies are the same, which is why you need to ask your cloud provider what their backup plan is.
Whether there’s a security breach or a power outage, you still need access to your information.
The right cloud service provider will back up all of your business data to the cloud and duplicate that data for storage at a different location. This ensures your business’s data will remain safe and accessible no matter what kind of security threat is out there.
When it comes to sensitive data, your small business should never take cloud security lightly.
About the Author: Adam Groff is a freelance writer and creator of content. He writes on a variety of topics including online security and cloud computing.