Data security checklist: 8 steps for cloud protection

Discover how to secure your data in the cloud with our 8-step checklist.

Securing data in the cloud is a critical strategic priority for all businesses. The number of data breaches reported to the CNIL increased by 79% in 2021. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the primary victims, accounting for 7 out of 10 notifications. The consequences are numerous: significant financial losses, disclosure of intellectual property, loss of customer trust, and more. While some data breaches stem from human error, they most often result from cybercriminal activities.

To ensure effective data security, organizations should adopt a data governance framework and implement continuous risk management practices.

How can you ensure your cloud data protection is secure? Here’s a list of 8 essential protection measures to adopt: check if you’re ticking all the boxes!

1. Implement Data Replication

The first step to securing your data is to create copies. In the event of a major incident—such as a ransomware attack that encrypts your data to disrupt your operations—you’ll be able to recover all your information. This allows your business to become operational again in no time.

It’s important to distinguish between a traditional backup and recovery, which creates a snapshot of data at a specific moment, and replication, which copies data from one location to another in real time or asynchronously. At Leviia, we provide triple replication across three different data centers to ensure your cloud security and data is always available. That’s what a trusted cloud looks like.

2. Ensure End-to-End Encryption

In cybersecurity threats, the assumption is that any data exchange can be intercepted. End-to-end encryption technologies secure your communications by making exchanged data unreadable to hackers attempting to access it.

While encryption during transmission protects the confidentiality of communication between two parties, server-side encryption secures data stored directly on data center disks. Only users with the necessary access controls can decrypt and view the data. Therefore, choosing a secure cloud provider that offers end-to-end encryption, both during transmission and on the server side, is critical.

3. Use Two-Factor Authentication

Phishing is a favored method among cybercriminals. The approach is simple: impersonate a trusted entity, such as a supplier, colleague, or partner, to steal sensitive information like an employee’s username and password, gaining access to your company’s systems and applications.

Implementing multi-factor authentication (2FA) is an excellent way to verify the authenticity of a login attempt. After entering their password, the user must confirm their identity by validating a digital key on their smartphone or entering a code received via SMS. 2FA prevents hackers from completing unauthorized logins, securing all access attempts to your company’s cloud data through user authentication.

4. Define a User Access Management Strategy

Compartmentalizing access to your company’s files is an excellent protective measure. If a malicious actor gains access to your applications using an employee’s account, their access will be limited, significantly reducing the impact of the breach.

Contact us to discuss your data access governance and user access management strategy with a Leviia expert.

Employees don’t always leave a company on good terms. Restricting access to cloud data also reduces the risk of insider threats, such as data theft by a disgruntled employee or a former staff member whose access was not revoked promptly. There’s no room for a dissatisfied employee to walk away with your client database or intellectual property.

5. Strengthen Security for Sensitive Data

Some sensitive data requires extra protection. Adding an additional password for access may be necessary, for instance, in case a PC or smartphone is stolen.

Additionally, it’s crucial to be alerted in case of a data breach to respond quickly. Your company can set up alerts on a trusted cloud platform to be notified of sensitive data downloads or transfers to unknown devices. This makes it easier to identify the source of data loss prevention incidents and take appropriate action to recover the data. A solid incident response plan also improves organizational agility in such scenarios. In some cases, data masking techniques can also be applied to conceal sensitive information from unauthorized users while maintaining operational usability.

6. Use Anti-Ransomware Solutions

In 2021, SMEs and startups were the most targeted businesses (52%, up from 34% in 2020) for ransomware risks. These malicious programs access systems, encrypt data, render it unusable, and paralyze operations. Cybercriminals then demand a ransom for data recovery.

To activate, ransomware must connect to a malicious website, via a DNS request—to obtain an encryption key. Several market solutions identify key-generating sites and block DNS requests triggered by malicious attachments or infected devices. Using such solutions reduces the risk of malware attacks. Leviia’s secure cloud natively integrates anti-ransomware protection to ensure greater data resiliency.

7. Automate Application Updates

Every employee uses one or more devices for work: a PC, laptop, smartphone, or tablet. These devices run essential applications, which often have vulnerabilities that cybercriminals exploit to attack businesses.

Over time, developers release patches through application updates to fix these vulnerabilities. An outdated application is likely to have exploitable flaws. Numerous endpoint security solutions allow businesses to remotely automate application updates across all company devices, ensuring protection against application vulnerabilities and enhancing data integrity.

8. Choose Sovereign Cloud Services

The data ethics of a company also involves selecting vendors that protect both privacy and sovereignty. The security of your data depends on the cloud solutions you choose. However, these solutions are subject to different privacy regulations depending on their country of origin.

Unfortunately, U.S.-based solutions are subject to the Cloud Act and Patriot Act, which allow U.S. federal agencies to access European users’ data, whether stored in the U.S. or Europe. These laws are heavily criticized as potential tools for economic espionage and raise questions about GDPR compliance and CCPA requirements.

The best choice is to opt for sovereign cloud solutions provided by French companies with data hosted in France. At Leviia, we offer a highly secure, data-centric security, GAFAM-independent French data storage platform, free from foreign regulatory constraints. Our servers are located in three French cities, and no U.S. technology is used in processing our clients’ data.

Multiple layers of protection work together to secure your cloud data. Beyond these measures, it’s essential to raise employee awareness about shadow data discovery, data classification, and train them in user behavioral analytics and vulnerability assessments to avoid human errors.

Want to discuss your business continuity or data erasure solutions? Our Leviia experts are here to help with the latest zero trust architecture, data discovery tools, and sovereign backup and recovery systems.