3 steps to bolster your cloud security management

Seizing the opportunity to leverage the power of cloud is an achievement, but it’s just one piece of a bigger cloud computing puzzle. To fully realize everything that cloud has to offer, an organization must have the capability and dedication to ensure that their cloud environment is secure.

Here are three steps that can help any organization improve their cloud security management.

Step 1. Assess your cloud environment for potential weaknesses

The first step is assessing your organization’s cloud environment and flagging potential areas of weakness. During the assessment, ask questions like: What security measures do we have in place?; How are they deployed?; Where are they deployed?; and;What features do those measures have to stop a cyberattack? Many cloud solutions have native tools to determine if a cloud environment is configured correctly. These commonly ignored tools are a great place to begin hardening your cloud environment.

It’s not uncommon for teams to suffer from alert fatigue, which makes it tempting to ignore alerts from cloud providers. Unfortunately, this reduces an organization’s ability to assess their level of compromise or risk, factors that normally precedes a ransomware event and this can make their response reactive instead of proactive. A proactive is far more efficient and allows for the organization to take the necessary steps to prevent an attack and save on reputation, time and costs.

Step 2. Fill the gaps

Once the business has completed its assessment, it’s time to address any discovered weaknesses. Hardening the cloud environment may take advantage of new technology, procedures or partnerships that can be more effectively leveraged to solve identified gaps. New technology should balance against existing technology to provide the best security solution that meets the requirements of ease of use, implementation and cost.

No company has a completely homogenous environment which makes it important to be open-minded and willing to assess and deploy different technologies to improve the company’s overall security posture. New procedures might be challenging to implement at first, but in the long run can prove to be well worth the investment.

Finally, if the business doesn’t have the bandwidth to solve the problems uncovered, it’s well worth considering a partnership with a managed service provider (MSP) that can proactively monitor and manage the environment. It’s a smart move, one that allows the business to focus on just that – business.

Step 3. Weave cloud security into company culture

Once any cloud security issues have been addressed, it’s essential to focus on weaving cloud security into the company culture. Keeping security at the top of the employee’s mind can make a significant difference to the company’s overall security posture.

It's worth setting up security tests and webinars. If your organization has a company newsletter, include best practices that employees can use. Make it a point that security is at the top of your company’s priorities as this will, over time, see employees adopt the same way of thinking and security will be at the forefront of their day-to-day interactions.

Following these steps will put your organization on a solid security roadmap that will bolster cloud security management and go a long way towards making any CXO happy. For more information on NTT’s Security and Compliance services, reach out to us at nttms.info@global.ntt, or give us a call at 1.800.332.0076, and we’d be happy to assist you.