Cloud migration is a time of risk for company assets, such as data and applications. During migration, information may be lost or compromised because data is more vulnerable while in transit. Cybercriminals may take advantage of a move to the cloud to attack your company.
Part of your migration planning process should be evaluating related security risks and adapting your cybersecurity strategy to meet the challenges of moving to the cloud.
Here’s an overview of 5 ways your company can promote security during a cloud migration.
1) Identity and Access Management
When companies move data and applications to the cloud, they often need to adjust access permissions. The process of granting authorized access to new users during migration may create opportunities for bad actors to strike. If access isn’t managed correctly, the migration process may also create internal risk by allowing employees to access data that doesn’t relate to their job role.
Identity and access management (IAM) is key to ensuring that only authorized access is allowed during and after a cloud migration. Access can be assigned according to job role to control both internal and external risk. Privileged access management (PAM) fine-tunes access even further.
2) Data Backup
Before migration, companies should ensure that they have strong data resiliency measures in place. Data backup and recovery needs to be tested before migration to determine if it will work correctly when needed.
Replicating data and backing it up will help to recover any information that may be lost or compromised during a move to the cloud. Data should be copied and stored in at least 2 locations to guarantee complete recovery.
3) Disaster Recovery
Moving to the cloud creates opportunities for disaster recovery through instant failover and off-site backups. However, cloud migration can result in a disaster of its own, if the process fails.
Before the migration process begins, your company should have a formal disaster recovery strategy in place. Disaster recovery empowers your business to bounce back after an equipment failure or in the event of data loss during migration.
4) Monitoring and Logging
During cloud migration, your company needs complete visibility into network activities. Monitoring and logging allow organizations undergoing cloud migration to keep an eye on network traffic to detect any behavior that is potentially malicious, such as unauthorized access attempts on data in transit and applications.
Logging keeps track of incidents and provides information through reporting that can be used to detect and prevent future attacks on the network.
5) Risk Assessment
Conducting a risk assessment is the first step to ensuring your cloud migration is secure and successful. A risk assessment will evaluate your company’s current security strategy and find gaps that might leave applications and data vulnerable to attack during migration.
Having a security service provider conduct the assessment gives your business a second pair of eyes that might catch something you missed.
Making Security Part of Your Cloud Migration Strategy
Every cloud migration needs a strategy to be successful. Security should be part of your cloud migration strategy, no matter how many times you have moved data and applications to the cloud.
KNZ Solutions develops cloud migration strategies and provides data center and network security services to protect data and applications during the process.
As a Cisco Premier Certified Partner, we make network security an integral part of every cloud migration. We can assess your company’s cloud migration risk and help you close security gaps before migration takes place.
Find out more about how to control risk during cloud migration.
