Cloud Security: How to Secure Your Sensitive Data in the Cloud

In today’s always-connected world, an increasing number of organisations are moving their data to the cloud for operational efficiency, cost management, agility, scalability, etc.

As more data is produced, processed, and stored in the cloud – a prime target for cybercriminals who are always lurking around to lay their hands on organisations’ sensitive data – protecting the sensitive data that resides on the cloud becomes imperative.

While most Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) have already deployed strong front line defense systems like firewalls, anti-virus, anti-malware, intrusion detection, etc. to thwart malicious attacks, sophisticated hackers are breaching them with surprising ease today. And once a hacker gains an inside entry by breaching the CSP’s perimeter defenses, there is hardly anything that can be done to stop him from accessing an organisation’s sensitive data. Which is why more and more organisations are encrypting their cloud data today as a critical last line of defense against cyber attacks.

Data Encryption Is Not Enough

While data encryption definitely acts as a strong deterrence, merely encrypting the data is not enough in today’s perilous times where cyber attacks are getting more sophisticated with every passing day. Since the data physically resides with the CSP, it is out of the direct control of the organisations that own the data.

In a scenario like this where organisations encrypt their cloud data, storing the encryption keys securely and separately from the encrypted data is of paramount importance.

To ensure optimal protection of their data in the cloud, an increasing number of organisations are adopting a Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) approach that enables them to securely create and manage their own encryption keys, separate from the CSP’s where their sensitive data is being hosted.

However, as more encryption keys are created for an increasing number of cloud environments like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Salesforce, etc., efficiently managing the encryption keys of individual cloud applications and securing the access, becomes very important. Which is why many organisations use External Key Management (EKM) solutions to cohesively manage all their encryption keys in a secure manner that is bereft of any unauthorised access.

Take the example of Office 365, Microsoft’s on-demand cloud application that is widely used by organisations across the globe to support employee mobility by facilitating anytime, anywhere access to Microsoft’s email application – MS Outlook and business utility applications like MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.

Gemalto’s BYOK solutions (SafeNet ProtectApp and SafeNet KeySecure) for Office 365 not only ensure that organisations have complete control over their encrypted cloud data, but also seamlessly facilitate efficient management of the encryption keys of other cloud applications like Azure, AWS, Google Cloud and Salesforce.

Below is a quick snapshot of how SafeNet ProtectApp and SafeNet KeySecure seamlessly work with Azure BYOK:

To elaborate, below is the step-by-step process of how this works