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5 Cloud Security Mistakes That Could Ruin Your Business

5 Cloud Security Mistakes That Could Ruin Your Business

5 Cloud Security Mistakes That Could Ruin Your Business

Are you worried about making security mistakes when your business operates in the cloud? Cloud vendors put a priority on keeping their cloud solutions secure. They offer security monitoring and management services to their clients and implement protocols that protect data and prevent unauthorized access. Nonetheless, if users of these cloud solutions are careless or don’t pay attention to cloud security, they can end up making costly mistakes.

Knowing and acknowledging that you’ve made a mistake in your cloud security strategy is the first step – taking action to correct those mistakes comes next. How do you identify when these errors have been made? What can you do to stop their effect from damaging your business? Is there a way to avoid these mistakes before they happen? Below, we’ve compiled five of the most common cloud security mistakes that businesses make and how you can prevent them from ruining your enterprise.

One way to help your organization avoid these mistakes and tighten the security of your cloud environment is by soliciting a managed service provider. Our MSP Buyer’s Guide contains profiles on the top cloud managed service providers for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as questions you should ask vendors and yourself before buying. We also offer an MSP Vendor Map that outlines those vendors in a Venn diagram to make it easy for you to select potential providers.

Download Link to Cloud MSP Vendor Map

Neglecting access control

The cloud can be accessed from virtually anywhere — which can open the floodgates for a security threat wanting to get into your cloud deployment. You need to maintain access control over your cloud environment to protect your data and prevent unauthorized users from entering your system. Many cloud providers offer access control capabilities out of the box; these vendors allow you to set authentication regulations across your entire cloud infrastructure and monitoring services to determine who is accessing your data, when they do so, and where they access it from.

Assuming legacy security tools will work in the cloud

You undoubtedly have security tools running on your infrastructure that help you keep your on-premise deployments and data safe. You might assume that these security tools will be able to work for your cloud solutions. If they can protect the physical hardware on your infrastructure, then surely they can protect your cloud environment as well, right?

However, this isn’t necessarily true for all cases. Some legacy security solutions will work for cloud deployments, but often they can only integrate successfully with cloud offerings from specific vendors. Other legacy solutions might have no cloud support at all. When you start using a cloud solution, you need to investigate security providers that support your cloud deployments. If your legacy security tools do work with your cloud environment, then they can certainly be a candidate — but keep other security providers in mind.

Leaving security entirely to the cloud provider

An enterprise cannot assume that the vendor of their cloud environment will be entirely responsible for security. Users still need to dedicate attention and effort to cloud security, whether through investing in security tools and services or outlining a series of best practices to follow. When you make an agreement with a cloud provider, they’ll outline security responsibilities for both themselves and for you in their service level agreement. Understand what your responsibilities are before you sign on; that way, you can take the right steps to address the security of your cloud environments.

Forgetting to protect your cloud hardware

It’s easy to forget about protecting the hardware that makes up your cloud deployment because you’re focusing on protecting the cloud environment. However, users with private and hybrid cloud architectures need to maintain the security of their cloud servers. Just like any device connected to a network, your enterprise should monitor a cloud server to look for malware or harmful actors.

Not properly deleting data from a cloud server

When you’re switching cloud environments or dropping a cloud deployment altogether, you need to ensure that you successfully remove your data from the cloud. If you don’t completely wipe that data before you leave, that data could be exposed to anyone who accesses that cloud environment afterwards. Your cloud provider should help you with this process, letting you know upfront information on where your data is being stored (how many servers your data is stored on, where those servers are located, etc.).


Running a cloud environment and need help managing the cloud services you use? Our MSP Buyer’s Guide contains profiles on the top cloud managed service providers for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as questions you should ask vendors and yourself before buying. We also offer an MSP Vendor Map that outlines those vendors in a Venn diagram to make it easy for you to select potential providers.

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Download Link to Managed Service Providers Buyers Guide

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