What are the most important cloud computing security concerns?

A strong governance around data access, coupled with the strategic use of AI and persona profiles, can significantly enhance an organization's ability to prevent data breaches. This not only protects sensitive data but also helps maintain the organization's reputation and customer trust. Data Breaches come from inside the organization, and are not specific to the use of public cloud. Data breaches always existed and have always been a big concern. A strong governance implemented through automation, with proper logging and auditing, and leverage of AI to detect access patterns can help greately in tackling these issues.

Some ways enterprises are protecting data breaches are by creating zones for their networks and blocking data transfer cross zones with help of fireflows. Another important aspect to prevent data breaches is by classifying data and having a strong IAM policy for it.

My perspective preventing measure is the key . Gain visibility into who access , why they have access and how long they need access and what they are going with that access which will simplify and prevent many things.

Data breaches are increasingly driven by sophisticated AI attacks & ransomware, posing significant challenges. Early detection and prevention are key, especially where predictive analytics and integrated security tools play a crucial role. Implementing Zero Trust architectures and enhancing AI capabilities are essential for proactive defense in the evolving work environment. With cloud ecosystems becoming more interconnected, robust API security is also a primary concern. The advent of quantum computing presents a challenge to current encryption methods, necessitating a transition to quantum-resistant techniques. Additionally, adapting to the rapidly evolving global data privacy landscape is crucial in maintaining security and compliance.

Over the years of working with several large companies, data access governance is very important. The policies should adhere to best practices and surpass industry standard required minimums. Also, continuing to evolve the security is very important. Hackers don't stop learning how to steal data, we should be just as active in making sure our data continues to be safe.

Define and use a data backup and replication strategy. Version your critical data. Define and implement a data lifecycle management strategy. Control access to users strictly. Setup alerts by monitoring your data(check for unusual patterns). Adhere to the Cloud Service SLA provided by Cloud service provider.

Preventing data loss is a crucial aspect of maintaining the confidentiality, integrity and availability of sensitive information. Design the system to anticipate failures and prepare for it. 1) Regular Backups 2) Fine-grained Access Control who access what 3)Alerts and monitoring 4) observability

In my opinion data loss comes down to "how prepared are you". The bottom line with data loss is what are you willing or capable of losing without impacting your business. The answer has a wide range of responses. But the real question is, what are you willing to do to protect your data. There are way to many products and services available for this to happen, however it comes at a cost. So you must decide pay now to keep my data safe or pay later when you business is impacted.

Ensure that you have a policy and program by managing the data lifecycle. Define clear standards and policies for your organisation and ensure that data owners and custodians are complying. Lastly leverage Encryption in transit and at rest. Particularly for any data which falls under any data protection act or health act.

Data is very importance in today's world. Data is a new lifeline. Cloud providers like AWS provide 11 9s of durability of storage class while Azure provides 4 9s of durability. That means 99.999999999% annual durability. For accidental data, deletion can be taken care of by enabling the versioning feature in AWS S3 bucket so the data can be recovered easily. Data stored in AWS can be intelligently transferred from one storage class to another depending on usage or policy defined to minimize costing.

Data privacy is crucial every where whether it’s cloud or on-premises. Proper data governance and data cataloging will help the classification even in data is in motion

This is the primary concern of every AI development. IT Departments want no sensitive information traveling to any endpoint, even if it applies all security protocols, especially for small start-ups. There is always a risk. You should develop your AI product without any sensitive information at the beginning. Consider including sensitive information when you are big enough to meet clients' compliance.

There are six key privacy principles to follow: user control, transparency, security, legal protections, no content-based targeting, and compliance. By using the state-of-the-art encryption tools and capabilities and organization is set to protect data both at rest and in transit.

When you are building your cloud environments, ensuring your enable all aspects of security, Cloud Guard, firewalls, WAF I have seen an incorrect security group, leaving a host open to attacks. Be mindful and document.

Data privacy is crucial in cloud computing, protecting personal and sensitive data from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, or processing. This concern is especially significant for users handling data subject to legal or ethical regulations, such as health records, financial transactions, and client information. Data privacy can be compromised by breaches, data leaks, data mining, and data residency issues. To ensure privacy, cloud users should comply with relevant laws like GDPR and HIPAA, use encryption and anonymization techniques, limit data collection and retention, obtain user consent, and select reputable cloud providers committed to data protection.

Leverage security services provided by cloud service provider, such as AWS Shield, Google Cloud Armor, or Azure DDoS Protection. These services are designed to detect and mitigate DDoS attacks. Design your cloud architecture to be scalable and redundant. Distribute your resources across multiple DC and regions to ensure that if one location is targeted, the others can continue to provide service. Utilize a CDN to cache and distribute content geographically. CDNs can absorb traffic spikes and distribute the load, minimizing the impact on your core infrastructure. Implement rate limiting to control the rate of incoming requests from a single source. Deploy a WAF to filter and monitor HTTP traffic between a web application and the Internet.

There is a need to bring a comprehensive solution that brings together people, processes, and technology to help protect against cyber threats. Business needs LOB or SaaS apps to run their mission and business critical functions. Apps have data, logic, business insights etc. These are the most critical infrastructure that people from various groups, vendors, B2B, B2C, departments and leadership needs access to. They are on Prem, on the cloud or a hybrid platform. Security needs to be built into every portion of this transaction and work seamlessly to have a highly productive shared model and environment.

It is imperative to understand where the customer's responsibility and the cloud service provider's responsibility lies and act accordingly. Implementing robust IAM policies is key. Ensure there is an incident response plan in place which is tested thoroughly from time to time.

Multi-tenancy in cloud environments means that multiple users and organizations share the same underlying infrastructure, leading to potential security risks. Mitigation: Ensure strong isolation between tenants, regularly update and patch systems, and monitor for unusual activities that may indicate unauthorized access.

Carefully review the shared responsibility model documentation provided by your public cloud provider to understand your specific responsibilities. This will clearly outline the security aspects managed by the provider and those that fall under your responsibility. Note that different providers may have slightly different interpretations and implementations of the shared responsibility model. It is essential to thoroughly understand your chosen cloud provider's specific model to avoid security gaps. Cloud providers offer a suite of tools, but remember that you are ultimately responsible for security governance.

The shared responsibility model balances the responsibility between the platform and users. It is essential to carefully read the policies before accepting them and including all possible actions that could mitigate data breach risks.

Different regions and industries have specific regulations regarding data handling and privacy. Ensuring compliance with these regulations (such as GDPR, HIPAA, etc.) while utilizing cloud services is crucial and often a complex challenge.

Failure to comply with industry regulations and legal requirements can result in penalties and damage to an organization's reputation. Mitigation: Stay informed about regulatory requirements, implement necessary controls, and work with CSPs that adhere to relevant compliance standards. Increase CIS compliance coverage in security hardening.

Compliance brings a unique challenge when deploying software to the cloud. Ensuring country legislation has certification, meaning your software developers need to have their feet firmly planted to keep current. Not being compliant not only puts your customer at risk, but also will leave a stale feeling for your customer.

One of the concerns or risks to consider is organizations not understanding shared responsibility on cloud especially customer responsibility in securing cloud environments. While cloud providers equip customers with several means and tools to secure cloud environments, effective design, implementation and governance around cloud security is of paramount importance.

"It's an organizational policy that drives security and architecture not the opposite", the approach must start top to bottom

Dependence on a single cloud provider can pose security concerns, especially if the vendor’s security measures are not up to par.

I work includes clients like Indian Government, NIC, IITs IIITs, and many more. Recently I deployed India's first AR VR lab at IIT Jodhpur to back up the data of that particular cluster we faced the issue of compliance so I suggested them to take regular backups on store it in an AWS S3 bucket. As AWS complies with ISO 27018, the data will be fully protected, stored in encrypted formated and privacy will be maintained.