With businesses becoming increasingly digital and data-driven, it is more important than ever to protect infrastructure from cyberattacks and data theft. While concerns over multi-tenancy have made some heavily regulated companies wary of cloud hosting, advancements in cloud architecture, intelligent threat detection and compliance tools have made the cloud significantly more secure. In this article, we look at why the cloud is one of the most secure options for businesses today.
Contents
Enterprise-level security
One of the chief reasons why the cloud is more secure is that providers continue to invest heavily in the latest and most advanced security tools. This gives users a level of protection that most businesses would find both financially and technically challenging to deploy. Some of the measures commonly used to defend today’s cloud environments include:
- Next-generation firewalls
- AI-powered intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS)
- Advanced malware scanning and threat intelligence feeds
- Network level, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection
Working together, these tools can detect and eradicate even sophisticated threats in real time, keeping business systems shielded from attacks.
Data encryption and compliance
Security and compliance go hand in hand, especially for companies that handle sensitive or personal data. With vast amounts of data stored in the cloud, providers have been swift to implement a range of robust data protection measures, including:
- AES-256 encryption for data at rest
- TLS encryption for data in transit
- Encrypted backups and storage
- Support for compliance frameworks such as ISO 27001, GDPR, PCI DSS and Cyber Essentials Plus
By integrating encryption and audit-friendly tools, cloud providers are better able to help businesses meet increasingly stringent data protection regulations.
Get up to speed with database protection, read: A Comprehensive Plan for Cloud Database Security
Zero-trust architecture
A modern approach to cybersecurity that is being increasingly adopted by providers and businesses, the zero-trust model takes the position that no user, device or connection can be trusted by default and that every access attempt must be verified.
In the cloud, zero-trust is implemented through several layers of access control. These include multi-factor authentication, role-based access control, IP whitelisting and geofencing, and checking device health before access is granted. Together, these measures help protect against a wide variety of threats, including those stemming from compromised login credentials, devices and connections, and insider threats.
Isolated environments and private clouds
With multi-tenancy being a concern for some businesses, cloud providers have implemented a range of measures, using advanced technologies, to prevent shared risk. Whether using public or private cloud, businesses can be assured that their workloads are hosted in isolated environments and are protected from other users through features like virtual machine segregation, container isolation and filesystem encapsulation (such as CageFS).
For businesses and organisations handling highly sensitive data, such as financial, medical or police records, a private cloud solution provides the benefits of cloud hosting while offering the assurance of a single-tenant architecture, dedicated resources and enhanced network segmentation. It is even possible to deploy hybrid clouds, combining public and private clouds and dedicated servers.
Automated security
Human error remains a major security risk. Indeed, according to Verizon’s Data Breach Investigation Report 2023, three-quarters of all data breaches involve a human element . To minimise this risk, cloud providers are making increased use of automation to handle critical security tasks. This includes OS and application patching, scheduled backups and real-time AI-based monitoring to automatically detect abnormal activity, file changes and suspicious login attempts.
By automating these tasks, service providers can reduce the risk of forgotten updates and backups or delays in responses to threats.
Automate your backups too, read: Futureproofing Your Data with Backup Strategies
Scalability helps prevent DDoS attacks
While firewalls can quickly detect and block IP addresses that constantly bombard a server, they can be overwhelmed by large-scale attacks, especially those that utilise thousands of compromised devices.
One advantage of the cloud for mitigating a DDoS attack is the ability to scale up on demand or even utilise autoscaling. With access to vast resources, this means cloud-based systems can absorb large volumes of malicious traffic, ensuring that legitimate users can continue accessing services while firewalls work to get the attack under control. Additionally, providers can also implement load balancing and rate limiting to further protect against resource exhaustion.
Built-in resilience
Today’s cloud platforms can offer businesses a remarkable 100% availability. This is achievable by hosting data across redundant infrastructure in multiple data centres. This means that if there is a failure in one location, workloads can be automatically migrated, without downtime, to other systems or data centres.
Moreover, by mirroring data across different locations, businesses are protected from data loss due to hardware failure, natural disasters or power outages that might take a data centre offline. This level of resilience makes cloud hosting the ideal solution for critical applications that need to be available all of the time.
Considering Multi-cloud? Read: The Benefits and Challenges of Multi-Cloud Hosting
Conclusion
Ongoing advancements mean that today, not only is the cloud a scalable, high-performing and cost-effective hosting solution; it is also highly secure. Using advanced technologies, like AES encryption, automation and AI-powered monitoring, together with compliance support and private cloud options, cloud providers are able to protect customers from a wide range of sophisticated threats.
ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus certified, and an authorised HM Government G-Cloud supplier, eukhost delivers secure cloud solutions designed for today’s digital businesses. For more information, visit our Cloud Hosting page.
