The challenge of cloud security compliance

The conveniences that cloud computing brings to businesses make it the tech du jour of many industries, such as manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, construction, and education. And as COVID-19 forces people to practice social distancing, the cloud is instrumental in letting employees work remotely.

However, cloud computing is not without its challenges. Thanks to governments becoming more protective of their citizens’ privacy and security, cloud security compliance has become one of the biggest challenges that organizations face.

Data regulations compliance as a whole is complicated

Lawmaking bodies are always playing catch-up to technology. This means that the passage of new data regulations and subsequent amendments can be disruptive. Keeping compliance consistent throughout your organization is easy if your IT infrastructures are all on-premises, but complications may arise once you also have assets in the cloud. For example, if you suffer a data breach and regulators make audit requests, separate audits must be made for on-premises systems and cloud systems.

Adding more wrinkles to compliance is the fact that the rules may be different from state to state, nation to nation, and region to region. Managing compliance to different sets of shifting rules takes time and energy away from your actual business and is often best left to experts like SimplyClouds.

No, migrating to the cloud does not mean handing over all cybersecurity responsibilities to your cloud service provider (CSP)

While CSPs do claim that their platforms are secure, they can only control so much on their end. As a user of their services, you also have a role to play in keeping the clouds you use secure. Specifically, you have control over:

● Cloud configurations
● Third-party apps and services you use with your clouds
● Parties you allow access to cloud data

[Further reading: Regulatory compliance in the cloud — overcoming the fear]

Cloud security compliance ≠ security

Data regulations lay down in general terms what organizations must or must not do to protect the privacy and security of individuals. To illustrate, a Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard regulation states that credit card account numbers must never be displayed in full in most electronic communiques, but it does not discuss the hows for meeting this requirement. Whatever techniques and technologies you use to hide the middle digits of account numbers are left entirely up to you.

It’s the same case for complying with cloud security regulations. Implementing certain methods may indicate your compliance, but if the methods are actually ineffective, then you would remain unsecure. 

Additionally, regulations offer merely a baseline of controls and are often drafted with only the most popular threat vectors in mind. This means that mere compliance leaves you open to more advanced cloud security threats. 

Conversely, the best way to be compliant with cloud security regulations is to simply have impeccable hosted cloud security. Learn more about how SimplyClouds can keep you and your customers safe in the cloud by contacting us today.