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The Best Ways to Implement Cloud-Native Security for Your Company

The majority of companies these days have at least some degree of an online presence. That is true regardless of the services that they offer or the products they make. Many companies will probably have various online tools that its workers use. For instance, they might utilize the cloud.

If your company uses the cloud, then you need to have security features for it. Those typically include cloud-native security features.

Cloud-native security should concern many emerging companies. If you are using the cloud, but you do not have cloud-native security in place, you are potentially opening yourself up to hacker attacks, as well as all kinds of other problems.

In this article, we will talk about cloud-native security. We will discuss what the term means, as well as the best ways to implement it if you feel that it would help your company.

What Does “The Cloud” Mean?

First, let’s talk about the cloud, just in case you do not know this term. The cloud means a network of remote servers, or powerful computers. Third-party providers host them, and as a company or individual, you pay to access those servers. You might pay a subscription fee every month, quarter, or year.

You can easily access the cloud directly over the Internet. As a user, you can store enormous amounts of data there. You can also access various applications that your business needs to succeed.

You can do all of this without having to manage any physical technology. When businesses think about signing up for a cloud-based service, they will often do so because they do not want to have to deal with any physical hardware. If they had physical hardware, then they would need to have in-person security measures to make sure that no one unauthorized could ever access it.

As a business owner, if you sign up the cloud instead, then you will always have the tools and data you need easily within reach. You can access it from virtually any physical location, as long as you have Internet access.

What Does Cloud-Native Security Mean?

As for the cloud-native security concept, it simply means a type of integrated, comprehensive security strategy. It focuses on protecting things like the data and applications that you have in the cloud and that your company uses regularly.

The cloud-native security that you have needs to remain in place at all times. If it ever lets up, then a hacker could access all of your data.

That data probably includes all the customer and employee information that you collect and store. You will doubtless use the data on your customers that you have collected for things like targeted marketing strategies.

If you let that data leak out, then you have compromised and broken the trust that your clients or customers had in you. That could mean your company’s demise. It might cause a lawsuit as well, in some instances, if your customers can establish that you did not protect their sensitive data well enough.

How Can You Implement Cloud-Native Security if You Want It?

Let’s say that your company uses the cloud. You might have a public cloud setup, a private one, or a hybrid model.

No matter which of the three you have, you will want to look into a cloud-native security infrastructure. Your IT department will do this, presumably, since they will have the most information about the latest cloud-native security technology that exists.

They will probably want to start by looking at encrypting the data that you have in the cloud. They will want to encrypt it both when its at rest and when you’re moving it around.

Your IT department will also probably look into implementing Identity and Access Management, sometimes abbreviated as IAM. Your IT staff will also likely want to have overarching network security policies in place that your whole company follows.

This might present some challenges. That is because your average workers who don’t have a strong IT background might not necessarily know how to use security measures when accessing apps or data that your company keeps in the cloud.

That’s why a significant part of setting up cloud-native security for your company will involve regular employee training sessions. Your IT department can run these sessions and make sure that all of your workers know the best security practices associated with the cloud. This way, you can feel a lot more confident that you won’t ever have to deal with a data leak or a similar damaging situation.

Other Ways to Ensure Your Company Has Strong Cloud-Native Security

In addition to all of that, you can also set up a zero-trust cloud security architecture. That means you will have a security setup in place that assumes you can trust no worker or device by default.

Even if you have someone within your network already, the zero-trust model insists that your users verify every access request separately. It’s a way you can make completely sure that no one unauthorized can access sensitive data. It’s essentially having multiple layers of security embedded within your cloud architecture.

You will probably have continual authentication requests that come up each time a worker uses one of your separate tools within the cloud. Some of them might grumble about having to do that a bit, but it’s one of the most logical ways to prevent hacker attacks.

If you have a cloud-native security architecture that features data encryption, identity and access management, and also sweeping identity verification measures for authentication that you teach all of your workers to use, you should have a setup that your clients or customers will appreciate. If they ever ask about what measures you have in place to protect their data, you can give them a list of everything that your cloud-native security setup includes.

In this way, you can establish that you are running a fully modern company that uses and embraces all of the latest tech.

Susan Melony