The more headlines we see about companies getting destroyed by hackers, the more the topic of cloud security comes to the lips of those who have something to lose. In these conversations, the fact that human error is often the most apparent problem usually comes to light.

Let’s take a look at how you decide who should gain complete access to your system. For example, administrative accounts have access to everything, as they should, but for the day-to-day administrative tasks and regular maintenance, this is a bad idea.

Rather than opening yourself up to any number of security risks, don’t use a highly privileged login for these the usual administrative duties. Furthermore, your highly privileged accounts should be monitored closely for any suspicious activity.

Locking Down Access

The United States Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council issues guidance to financial institutions. Since 2005, the Council has recommended using more than one factor in gaining access to an account. The “factor” is generally a password entered after the username. Using more than one factor has spread widely to many popular email services, including Gmail and Apple’s iCloud emails, which are backed up with multi-factor security.

Your organization can significantly reduce the chance of a hacker getting into your system by taking on a multi-factor security strategy, especially for administrative accounts, because it adds a second layer of security to the process of logging in.

Also, remember that cloud platforms, which are getting more and more use in today’s digitized environment, make it easy to deploy applications. This ease of use has a side effect — increased vulnerability, which is why your cloud security strategy must account for every possible weakness.

Cyber threats continue to evolve, which is what has pushed many organizations to consider managed security. Rather than try to keep up with sophisticated cloud security technology and processes, IT teams can offload that worry to a managed security partner.

Managed security from a well-established partner would include the following:

• Analytics for staying ahead of threats
• Better strategies for network protection
• Integration of machine learning
• Managed firewalls
• Flexibility for all types of networks
• A more comprehensive approach to security

At eXemplify, the above is exactly what we offer our clients. If you’re looking for a partner to assist you in keeping your data safe and your systems up and running, we can put you on the right path. Contact us and let’s start the conversation about cloud security made easier.