Cloud computing is widely being adopted across many industry sectors. According to statistics, around 85% of businesses around the world use cloud computing for various organizational purposes.

By utilising cloud computing, most firms have reduced total cost of ownership, enhanced organizational abilities through SaaS, PaaS, and server virtualization, to become more competitive.

Despite its efficiency contributions, cloud computing gives rise to several vulnerabilities. However, some methods deal with these vulnerabilities and make cloud computing more effective. We’ll help break them down for you:

Data Residency & Security

Data residency and data security are vital concerns when moving to the cloud. The main concern with data residency is who manages and has access to the data.  Additional issues include where the data is stored and what laws apply.

The critical solutions to overcoming data residency concerns are data encryption and tokenization. Data encryption is the process that converts clear text data into ciphertext, unreadable to unauthorized users.

Tokenization involves converting sensitive data into random strings that only serve as a reference to original values—these strings can’t be used to identify the data itself. The only way to figure out which token refers to relevant data is through a token vault—a database that uses these tokens as references to data values. The token vault itself is often secured through encryption.

Downtime

Downtime is a common concern for businesses when they move to cloud computing. Often, substandard server hosting services experience technical difficulties that bring down entire servers—along with the client organization’s server cloud. Server downtime and the resulting operational disruptions can cost as much as $1 million depending on how deeply integrated the organization is with the cloud.

Many businesses, particularly small and medium-sized businesses, cannot afford regular interruptions without incurring significant financial losses.  For instance, in 2017, an outage on Amazon Web Services cost the stock market around $150 million. 

It's vital to be proactive when protecting your organization from downtime. Make sure your hosting providers are readily available and have planned for all contingencies. If your business can't afford frequent outages, use multi-region deployments to ensure operational continuity.

Cyberattacks

In cloud computing, all aspects of the organization's information are stored and processed online. That means the information is continuously vulnerable to malign influences who can use cyberattack strategies like DDoS attacks, SQL injections, Cross-site scripting, DNS Tunneling etc. to get access to sensitive data.

The only solution to this problem is implementing strict cybersecurity measures and preparing contingency plans. Make sure that your cloud-hosting provider or your internal IT teams use the strictest security protocols to restrict unauthorized access and data breaches. Common methods to avoid data breaches through the cloud include routine backups, implementing user access controls, encrypting in-flight and at-rest data, as well as working with network security specialists.

Cloud computing has many vulnerabilities that only an expert can diagnose and resolve.  Lean Security is a managed services provider in Gordon, NSW. We’re highly qualified and experienced in cloud computing and its potential vulnerabilities.  Contact us at +61-2-8078-6952 for more information.