Owing to the benefits of scalability, agility, and flexibility, the investments in application cloud migration continue to accelerate. McAfee states that over 97% of companies have already adopted cloud-based technologies in at least one form, and over 40% are actively moving their workloads from on-premises centers to cloud architecture. Undeniably, the advantages of moving enterprise systems to the cloud are infinite, yet not all migrations go as smoothly as they were planned to be. Application cloud migration is clouded by incidents around data loss during the process, misconfiguration, and poor cloud security standards leading to data breaches.
Of course, not all cloud migrations threaten enterprise data leak or loss, but you must take precautionary measures during all the phases of cloud migration to protect data at all costs and mitigate such risks.
Here are a few ways you can ensure optimum cloud security and prevent any harm to your enterprise data.
#1: Evaluate your current data situation
Several enterprises yet do not employ the power of data to drive meaningful business decisions. In fact, unless there are risks to data breaches, they might not even assess their current data policies spread across several cloud architectures. Today, with data becoming a competitive asset for companies, it becomes imperative to take note of your existing data situation, identify which data you wish to move to the cloud, and decipher how it will affect your current data governance framework. Several providers help you with cloud security alliance, where they assess your existing data architecture and create an assessment report for the same.
#2: Study the compliance requirements
When undertaking an application cloud migration, you must know all the regulatory requirements that fit your data. If you are an established incumbent in the industry, you must determine how to meet data storage, encryption, backup, and transfer goals. You need to earn compliance certifications for regulations like HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and GDPR. Some of these regulations require keeping data on-site only; others do not have such requirements. You can always ask for compliance monitoring tools from your cloud security alliance providers to assess the protocols you need to fulfill.
#3: Encrypt your data
Implementing network security and encrypted network protocols help secure your data transition and boost cloud security. When performing application cloud migration, you must encrypt your data at rest and in transit. Data is the most vulnerable when exposed to the internet, even if only for a few minutes, which is why you must enforce secure data transfer protocols via HTTPS when executing any such actions.
#4: Consider phased application cloud migration
A phased migration is when you segment your data based on their priority levels and then move them to the cloud. Initiating such phased migration action not only boosts cloud security but allows you to unload workloads with controlled risk. This way, you can test all your efforts, identify vulnerabilities and bottlenecks in your cloud security before transferring high-priority data to the cloud. Although the slow onboarding of the applications might take time, it prevents you from hampering your data security when trying to speed up application cloud migration.
#5: Form a centralized monitoring system
Undeniably, cloud migration opens doors to several new opportunities but is not without challenges, even post-migration. Before, during, and after application cloud migration, you must employ security tools to centralize the management, gain a complete view of your migrated and non-migrated assets, identify vulnerabilities, and respond quickly to such risks. In such instances, implementing SIEM (security information and event management) solutions will help you centralize this entire process and incorporate analytics to gain data-driven insights.
Boosting Cloud Security of Your Enterprise Data
Indeed application cloud migration is a complex process. Still, with a vigilant eye and necessary cloud security alliance protocols in place, you can improve data security and protect your company’s invaluable assets throughout migration and after.