Increasingly, organizations and business units are migrating mission-critical data and systems to the cloud.
Migration to and between all kinds of cloud services is indeed associated with security challenges; however, migration between public cloud services is the most challenging and has the potential to have grave consequences.
How Secure are Cloud Migrations?
Approximately half of all study respondents' workloads and data reside in a public cloud, according to the Flexera State of the Cloud Report 2022. The growth of cloud adoption has subsequently led to a growing number of concerns about the security of data during migration to the cloud.
Here is a list of some of the security concerns that have been raised.
Vulnerabilities Associated With APIs
Getting applications, data, and infrastructure working in harmony through application programming interfaces can pose a major risk to the security of cloud data. This is due to the way they transmit data back and forth. There may be a lack of sandbox protection for APIs, a lack of authentication and authorization controls, and excessive privileges granted to APIs. Whenever organizations migrate data to the cloud, they should take into consideration the vulnerabilities associated with such migrations.
Blind Spots in Security
A cloud infrastructure that does not have the necessary security features can also put cloud data at risk due to security blind spots. There are some challenges associated with cloud computing environments, such as the use of software-as-a-service applications to store sensitive data and the creation of shadow IT networks. Cloud migration can result in these potential vulnerabilities being exposed, and organizations should take precautions to mitigate the risks when migrating to the cloud.
Loss of Data is a Serious Issue
A final concern is the risk of data loss when migrating data to the cloud. There is also the possibility that this may happen if the cloud provider does not have robust security and data recovery measures in place. This is in case there is an incident related to data security.
The Most Effective Ways to Secure Data in a Cloud Migration
In addition to the many potential security issues that can arise during a cloud migration, there are also several steps that your team can take to make sure that your data and applications are protected as well. During a cloud migration, there are seven tips you can use to ensure that your company's data is protected.
Make Sure Your APIs are Secure
Whenever data is moved to the cloud, it is crucial to ensure that the APIs that control access to and between cloud applications and infrastructure are secured. This will ensure data continuity. A simple way to enhance API security is by using strong authentication and authorization controls. These controls protect APIs against malicious or automated attacks. In addition, they remove excessive privileges granted to users for connecting to APIs.
During the migration to the cloud, limit access to data. For businesses seeking to migrate their data to the cloud in a secure manner, they must restrict access to data, during the transfer process. To ensure that only authorized users will be able to access the data, you need to take multiple steps to ensure this happens. Steps that should be taken to achieve this goal include:
- Ensuring authentication and authorization rules at the user level are implemented and enforced
- A robust two-factor authentication process should be established
- The cloud provider provides built-in security policies
- Enabling encryption of all data before the transfer
