The cloud: It sounds like a fluffy, magical place with Cupid strumming his harp and watching over your data. You can all but stop worrying about enterprise security, right? Not so fast. Just because you’re outsourcing aspects of your IT environment doesn’t mean you’re no longer on the hook if there’s a data breach.
It makes sense to move data to the cloud. With cloud solutions, the Internet of Things (IoT), and machine learning all collecting and analyzing large amounts of data, cloud storage can be an affordable and efficient way to store massive data sets. You no longer have to worry about storing, cooling, and powering a data center, and with the right provider, you get great performance and reliability. With all of these advantages to cloud storage, enterprises are often surprised to find that security isn’t part of the offering.
Not only is enterprise security still your responsibility, but you also face the same liability from a cloud-based breach that you would experience if the breach was on-site with your own hardware.
When you’re running infrastructure as a service (IaaS), the good news is you are able to take your same security policies and tools and apply them to your IT environment. Most enterprises run into trouble when they employ a database-as-a-service (DaaS) solution because, while this option transfers database management to a cloud provider, it does not provide security.
Even when an enterprise requests its own tools be added to the database to provide security, the provider is likely to refuse on the grounds that third-party involvement will void the warranty.
Some enterprises turn to native logging, which pulls database logs into an existing security application, but this doesn’t solve everything. Any threat can’t be seen in real time and any intruder will be able to see a copy of your logs. Storage is in clear text, so encryption isn’t helpful. It’s also important to note that native logging can severely impact performance.
Look for a cloud security solution that is positioned in front of the database to allow you to send database traffic to your existing security tools. This way you won’t have to install any software on your database. This is a superior solution compared to native logging because it can handle encrypted data by bypassing the restrictions that might keep you from installing security software on a cloud provider’s database.
Are you looking for more information related to enterprise security, cloud database storage, or digital transformation in general? Contact us at eXemplify to get started on solutions that support your digital strategies while protecting your data.