No one will deny that data is king across all business sectors. It's used to make decisions and achieve efficiency through automation - meaning data is critical to ongoing success.

The value of data also means that it is a huge target for cybercriminals.

With many businesses migrating to the cloud for enhanced flexibility and scalability, and some developing a multi-cloud management strategy, the need for robust security measures has become more pronounced than ever.

For this reason, a proactive vulnerability assessment plays a pivotal role in mitigating cyber threats and safeguarding sensitive data. Let's find out more.

Cloud vulnerability explained

Cloud technology is incredibly versatile, able to do anything from inventory management and accounting to marketing and managing software. It can manage national and regional communications, whether you need to use area code 720 for your Denver-based customers or a global domain for your international workforce. It can even support data processing and automation.

 

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However, this new capability brings the potential for disastrous data breaches and outages as all a company's data is in one place.

Cloud vulnerability points can include:

• Visibility of customer data
• Sending and receiving copyrighted assets
• Reliance on a single operating system
• Outsourcing of protected data processing
• Internal malice and data leaks

Large companies and those that rely on a single cloud system for all their operations are particularly at risk, as an outage could bring all business systems to a halt.

How to assess for cloud vulnerability

Assessing your cloud solutions for vulnerabilities is simple and can save you a lot of time, money, and customer trust.

To do it, follow these steps:

1. Identify all elements - You may use the cloud for more than you realize, such as for document management or internal data storage.
2. Collate data - Identify areas where it is possible for data to be accessed unlawfully, lost, or shared, or where you might suffer from a wide-ranging software outage.
3. Identify requirements - Before implementing a solution, identify what is legally required of your security measures, as well as the expectations of your staff and clients.
4. Test for vulnerabilities - Run real-time tests, such as sending false phishing emails to employee email accounts to test for cyber threat readiness.
5. Develop a resolution - For example, a software provider could implement DevSecOps for cybersecurity to incorporate risk management into software development.
6. Continually assess - Continually test your system for identified vulnerabilities, particularly if you add to or change any part of your system.
7. Stay on top of regulations - Rules concerning data security are subject to change, so make sure you know whether you need to do anything extra to protect your cloud system.
   

With expert insights, this is a fairly simple process that can save you a huge amount of resources down the line.

In particular, it can help you stay ahead of cyber security risks as they evolve and seek to target cloud-based systems. Cloud vulnerability assessment, combined with a strong focus on cyber awareness, ensures that your organization is well-prepared to identify and address potential threats proactively.

How does this mitigate cyber risks?

The best way to tackle a risk is to know what you're up against.

In this case, you can't begin to mitigate the risks of cyber security attacks if you don't know what they are and how they are done.

This is a hugely effective way of managing customer trust and security by, for example, protecting your omnichannel contact center solution.

Forward planning is also essential to mitigating cyber security risks. This can only be done when risks are identified ahead of time so that protective measures can be proactive instead of reactive.

For example, consider a company that keeps customer data within a CRM. This company may face:

• Phishing
• Spoofing
• Insider threats
• IoT - Internet of Things attacks

These are all types of attacks that seek to take control of a system and access sensitive data, which can then be used for fraudulent purposes or sold to a third party.

Data loss on this scale could be catastrophic for this business, so by identifying potential threats, it can begin to fight them.

What action could this business take? Consider the following:

• Ongoing training - Educate staff on how to identify phishing emails so that they don't erroneously hand over customer data.

• Implement a process - Everyone in your team should know how and when to raise the alarm in the instance of a cyber breach or security risk.

• Strong passwords - Using a weak password can grant hackers easy access to secure information, so choosing a strong one that can't be easily guessed offers another layer of protection.

• Encrypt data - Encryption turns data into a random series of codes until decoded using a password known only by the intended recipient.

• Monitor access - If a breach does occur, this business should be able to identify which user account had access to the data and may have been the cause of the leak.

Cloud vulnerability assessment also helps you to consistently track existing and evolving threats to cyber security. Beyond that, it can also help you to make changes to your workflows to better defend against data breaches, especially when leveraging managed cloud services.

For example, your business might decide to adopt an official password policy or to begin encrypting sensitive data.

You can also break down data processing into smaller, more manageable tasks that can be monitored for breaches.

For example, using Hadoop cluster architecture can help remove the need for large-scale data processing in a single action, which can open your organization up to data security risks.

Final thoughts

Data security and reduction of cyber security risk is one of the core ways that your business can prevent regulation breaches and maintain customer trust.

As more businesses move to the cloud, it's vital to assess all cloud systems for potential points of weakness. At this point, you can strengthen your defenses against cyber threats and keep updated on all the latest regulations.

Make sure to involve everyone in your team who needs to be able to identify and defend against data breaches.

This way, you'll keep your business safe and build trusting, long-term relationships with your customers.

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