Australian Cyber Security Magazine, ISSUE 9, 2019

Page 12

Cyber Security

How can SMBs overcome cloud security fears and passivity?

T By François Amigorena

he use of cloud storage has been increasing the past few years due to the huge benefits it brings to businesses. Not only does it increase flexibility within the business, it also greatly improves productivity. Nowadays, organizations can’t afford not to use the cloud. However, cloud storage can be risky. Some of these risks are technical and some are more human. In fact, 61% of small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) believe their data is not safe in the cloud for technical reasons. Furthermore, the current attitude towards cloud storage is driving bad security decisions and damaging data security.

SMBs are worried about their data in the cloud SMBs find it very hard to trust a third party with their valuable data for the simple reason that once it lives in the cloud, they lose complete visibility and control over it. Old fears are still very much present.

It is difficult to detect unauthorized access Nowadays, the detection of unauthorized access to sensitive data represents one of the biggest cloud security concerns. When files and folders are stored on premises file servers, data is pretty secure considering that you need to be physically present in the office to access this data. Even

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with remote employees or partners using VPNs, access can be restricted to specific devices only which keeps the data relatively secure. On the other hand, when files and folders are stored in the cloud, they can be accessed from anywhere in the world, using any device. This greatly increases the chance of unauthorized access leading to major security concerns for the IT teams who are having troubles detecting misuse. Businesses must have the right access controls in place because if an employee’s credentials were to be compromised, the attacker could possibly access sensitive data from wherever he wants and on whatever device he wants. 21% of SMBs said they keep their most sensitive data stored on on-premises infrastructure because they don’t trust its security in the cloud. Because of the lack of visibility of who is accessing these files and folders, they are worried that the data might end up in the wrong hands. It is easy for leaving employees to steal data before they go (and hard to stop) It’s not easy for security teams to spot and stop employees who are leaving the organization from stealing valuable files before they go. For the same reasons as above, this is much easier to spot when data is stored on a physical desktop computer. With data being accessible from anywhere, cloud storage makes it easy for outgoing employees to steal data before they leave.


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