According to Tech Target, a cloud security audit is a periodic assessment of an organization’s ability to assess and document its vendor’s performance. An audit can be done internally or externally and should be done at least annually.
What’s involved in a cloud security audit?
During the cloud security audit, a lot of ground will be covered by the person who is orchestrating the audit. Below are the main things that a cloud security audit will often cover.
Current Compliance with Industry Regulations and Standards
Being compliant with the required standards and standards for your organization’s industry is essential to the success of your audit and your organization. Failure to do so will result in fines that may put a major dent in your organization’s wallet.
Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability of Your Data
Knowing that the organization keeps the integrity and confidentiality of the data will ensure that the organization isn’t abusing it as it’s being stored.
Current Security Controls
Having a working security system is a core part of the audit. If it’s not working properly or at all, then you have no protection, which may result in paying fines for compliances, regulations, and standards, and those fines will add up.
Risk Assessments
Understanding your risk exposure is a necessity when it comes to cloud security. Knowing the cloud’s vulnerabilities will help map out the lines of defense, and will make your data privacy solution more complex.
Recommendation of Improvements in Security Posture
Having security in place is great in general, but there’s always more than we can do to prevent malicious attacks. Knowing and practicing preventative measures may reduce the risk of any attack in the future.
While this process may feel overwhelming, there’s always something you can do now to ensure that you’re cloud security audit goes as smoothly as possible.
Be Proactive, not Reactive.
Identify cloud providers being used.
Knowing what cloud providers are being used in your cloud ecosystem displays the full picture of your cloud security. This also gives you a chance to compare and contrast their purpose with your cloud objectives for the organization. If they are no longer meeting the objectives, it has no reason to be part of the ecosystem, resulting in lessening the vulnerability.
Understand what is being provided by the provider.
Every cloud provider’s responsibility for cloud security may not be the same across the board. It’s important to know:
- What they are currently controlling
- What they can control if they aren’t controlling now, if they aren’t
- What is your responsibility
Doing this exercise maps out what is covered by the cloud and what needs to be protected by you. This step is also monumental because it initiates important discussions: like identifying the future of the cloud and what is needed to achieve it.
Identify who has access to the cloud.
Every user added to the cloud can be posed as a risk. If someone has access to the data they don’t need, it can leave the datasets compromised if a malicious attack were to occur. To lessen the magnitude of the risk, make sure that your organization has authorization and authentication, for the necessary people only, in place.
Encrypt Data in transit and at rest
To ensure that the actual data being tested, queried, or stored is being protected, consider it encrypted to ensure safety throughout the dataset’s lifetime in the cloud.
Monitor the Cloud
Identifying suspicious activity in the cloud may be challenging if there isn’t a standard to compare it to. Educate yourself and inform your team of what’s normal and what’s not in case of any malicious attacks. This also makes everyone conscious of what is entering and leaving the cloud. While monitoring the cloud may be used for pinpointing suspicious activity but may be able to be used for catching human error. We all make errors, and being able to catch any human error right away, can avoid compromising situations.
Keeping data up to date
To ensure effective cloud security, maintaining the cloud is crucial as it identifies what data has a reason for being in the cloud, and what can pose a threat to the security of the cloud. This can also be used as an exercise that forces the organization to clean out the cloud in the hopes of optimizing the storage and functions of the cloud.
With the help of the preventative measures mentioned above, a major job any organization can benefit from is understanding the data being stored in the cloud.
How C² Data Can Help
The C² Data Privacy Platform is your powerful, all-in-one solution for managing and securing data across enterprise cloud and hybrid environments. It handles data management, discovery, and security with ease.
Key Features:
C² Manage: Gain full visibility into all data regions within your AWS account, laying the foundation for comprehensive data discovery by answering the crucial question: “Where is my data stored?” Turn on and off the unnecessary accounts to reduce AWS costs.
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C² Secure: Protect your discovered data with expert recommendations on encryption, masking, synthesis, and redaction. With over 21 years of experience serving Fortune 500 clients, C² Secure ensures your sensitive data is effectively safeguarded.
