If you have recently migrated to the cloud, then it’s incredibly important that you understand the ins and outs of encryption. By encrypting all of the files and important pieces of data that you store in your cloud, you will make it ten times harder for cybercriminals to hack into them. The end result? You fend off cyberattacks before they have the chance to befall you.
To ensure that you are able to encrypt your cloud data in the safest and most secure way possible, it’s important that you are aware of the following best practices.
Formulate a policy
Before you do anything else in your bid to encrypt your data, you must formulate a cloud encryption policy. This should detail the ins and outs of what specific pieces of data you want/have to encrypt (certain pieces of data will be regulatory, making them legally subject to encryption). Also in this policy, there should be details about how you plan to manage your wireless encryption keys — factors such as who will be holding the keys, how they are going to be used to decipher your data, and the process of protecting them against theft or loss should be outlined in this instance.
When formulating your policy, be sure to ask yourself these three all-important questions:
- What data needs to be encrypted?
- Is there a deadline imposed on the encryption of this data?
- Where is the safest place to deploxy the encryption?
Encrypt your data using your own keys
As stated at www.mcafee.com, if you are encrypting particularly sensitive data, you should be doing so using your own keys. This will instantly provide your data with a layer of protection, simply because it won’t be subjected to interference from outside parties. You should even go as far as to refuse the complimentary keys that your cloud service provider gifts you, as they themselves could be compromised by a third-party or cybercriminal at any minute.
The safest destinations to deploy your encryption
Cloud data encryption can be deployed in a multitude of different places. Some of the safest of these destinations include:
On the operating system that you use — many large vendors, such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, all offer what is known as data-at-rest encryption.
In your cloud platform — should you use a software-as-a-service (SaaS) application, this option will be offered to you as standard.
Over your virtual private network (VPN) — most of today’s top VPN vendors provide de-facto data-in-motion protection.
The moment you take the plunge and decide to migrate to the cloud, you have to start considering all the ways you are going to protect your data. If you don’t take the fight against cybercrime seriously, sooner rather than later, you’ll be impacted by this plight and you’ll lose thousands as a result.
To provide your cloud-based data with The Best chance possible of remaining out of the clutches of cybercriminals, you simply must encrypt it. When you do, be sure to remember all for the Best practices listed above.
