Enterprises, both large and small, are increasingly deploying cloud security solutions to protect their digital assets and business operations from cyber threats.
According to IBM Data Breach Report 2024, 45% of breaches are cloud-based and the global average cost of a data breach in 2024—a 10% increase over last year and the highest total ever.
It's essential for organisations to not only execute cloud security solutions but also choose a resilient cloud security solution to protect their computing systems and enterprise data.
This article tells you everything you need to know about cloud security, its definition, how it works, its types and features.
What is Cloud Security?
Cloud security is a branch of cyber security that ensures an organisation’s digital networks and data are protected against any cyber threats, such as unauthorised access, data breaches, or malicious activities on a digital system.
It’s an imperative set of policies set in a cloud computing environment that not only protects data from cyber threats but also ensures that an organisation’s digital systems meet data privacy and compliance-related regulations.
Cloud security technologies usually manage access to an organisation’s digital system. It means that the admin of cloud security decides who has access to what information within the organisational digital systems. It controls access to data, applications, and even infrastructure in cloud computing settings.
Its primary goal is to prevent attacks and tackle vulnerabilities before opening up opportunities for hackers and cyber threat actors. However, in case of an attack, cloud security will deploy protection protocols and respond to attacks. It will minimise the impact of the cyber attack and prevent the systems from being fully compromised.
What is Cloud Security Important?
Cloud security is important because it targets the protection of an organisation's cloud-based digital systems and data from cyber threats. The protection cloud security measures are deployed to protect an enterprise's sensitive data, applications, infrastructure, user access, network connections, and compliance adherence.
Specifically, the measures put in place aim to safeguard an organisation against unauthorised access, data breaches, malicious attacks, and cyber risks. This ensures that data remains private while complying with industry regulations and standards.
How Cloud Security Works?
Cloud security works by executing technical and organisational measures to protect cloud-based systems and data from cyber threats. It deploys a combination of features to tackle vulnerabilities before threat actors exploit an organisation’s cloud platform.
According to Google Cloud, cloud security ensures data protection, supports regulatory compliance, and provides control over privacy, access, and authentication for users and devices.
Cloud service providers (CSPs) are usually the ones to provide cloud security services to organisations using cloud computing platforms. However, both the service provider and the customer (in this case an organisation using cloud platforms) are responsible for carrying out the cloud computing security measures.
CSPs role is to provide the cloud services and the core infrastructure to safeguard the organisation’s systems but the cloud service user is responsible for protecting any functions running within the cloud.
This could include network controls, identity and access management (IAM), data, and application security. This approach is called a shared responsibility model technique where both service providers and customers are responsible for the task.
Types of Cloud Security Services
There are three commonly known cloud security services including the following:
1. Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) are a set of cloud-based security tools that constantly monitor the security posture of an organisation’s cloud infrastructure. It identifies and remediates vulnerabilities in cloud platforms by automating visibility, continuous monitoring, threat detection, and remediation workflows.
Essentially cloud security services search for misconfigurations in an organisation’s cloud infrastructure across the main cloud computing service models. These are – Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS).
CSPM services proactively spot vulnerabilities in cloud infrastructure and remediate them before a data breach occurs. By monitoring and enforcing security best practices, CSPM helps organisations maintain a secure cloud environment.
2. Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP)
Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP) is a type of security tool that protects an organisation’s workloads functioning inside the cloud software. It spots threats and eradicates them from within the cloud system before they have an opportunity to be breached.
CWPP solutions can detect threats in containers, virtual machines, and serverless functions. They are ideal for protecting hybrid and multi-cloud environments as they can provide visibility and analysis of security risks across multiple workloads.
3. Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB)
Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) can be described as a security tool that controls and monitors user access to cloud applications and data. Microsoft describes it as a “policy enforcement point positioned between enterprise users and cloud service providers.”
They enforce security policies, such as data loss prevention, threat protection, and compliance. CASBs can be deployed as either a cloud-based or on-premises solution.
What to Look For in Cloud Security?
Cloud security solutions that prioritise features aiming to improve visibility, control, and most importantly protection of cloud platforms. These features are:
1. Controlled Access
For the top cloud security solutions, enterprises are recommended to ensure the product can implement highly encrypted authentication methods such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) to protect against unauthorised access.
Additionally, organizations can implement role-based access control (RBAC) to grant users only the necessary permissions to perform their tasks, reducing the risk of accidental or malicious actions.
2. Data Protection
Cloud security can help enterprises keep their data safe and prevent cyber criminals from gaining unauthorised access to this data. To ensure data protection, encryption is a must. Organisations are suggested to select cloud security solutions that encrypt the data when at rest and also in transit to prevent unauthorised access.
Additionally, the cloud security solution should prioritise data loss prevention (DLP) measures to avoid any compromise of sensitive data from either being accidentally or maliciously shared.
3. Compliance
Cloud security must ensure organisations meet all necessary industry standards and regulatory requirements. Such solutions are usually designed to be mindful of such requirements and tend to keep track of industry-specific compliance standards such as HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI DSS.
4. Automation
Cloud security can help organisations leverage advanced technologies to automate their cloud computing operations and enhance system security. Enterprise security solutions can automate routine security tasks to improve efficiency and reduce human error.
Cloud protection solutions should integrate easily with an organisation’s existing security tools and workflows. This helps detach security from tedious administrative tasks instead automation can accelerate operations safely.
