Our world will become completely digital in a few years. This is a good thing but also raises some serious questions about data security; every business (be it small or large) needs to be vigilant about data security in this digital era.
Most companies store their data on-premise and look after its security themselves. However, a new trend is slowly picking up the pace – cloud hosting. The technology has given impressive results when it comes to data security by offering a secure virtual environment.
Cloud hosting offers numerous control levels to enable protection and continuity. It has become an integral part of creating a secure environment for businesses across the globe. The cloud hosting providers offer multiple security features like data privacy, data integrity, encryption, and more. Let’s have a look at some methods by which cloud hosting ensures security.
- Privacy Protection
The first step towards ensuring data security is data encryption and controlling who has access to which data. For this, you need to identify sensitive data – discover where such data resides, classify it into different data types, and create policies based on the data types.
You can also use multiple tools that automate this process – Amazon Macie and Azure Information Protection are some popular examples.
There can also occur a scenario where you might need to offer special authorization to a person to access specific data. For instance, testers or developers might need access to live data in order to test the code. Your hosting provider will take care of all these things and ensure that your data is safe.
- Data Integrity
The basic definition of data integrity is the protection of data from any unauthorized modification, fabrication, or deletion. Role-based authorization is the key here – you can decide the authorization level and ensure that the data is not modified or lost by unauthorized users. The system administrator decides who has access to which data to ensure its integrity.
Also, when the data is hosted on the cloud, its integrity is protected. Hosting providers deploy bots that monitor your data for any unusual activity. They prevent unauthorized access by using the latest antivirus and firewalls, intrusion detection, and multi-factor verification.
- Prevention from DDoS Attacks
The frequency of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks is on the rise, making it a major concern for most companies and organisations across the globe. Fortunately, cloud hosting offers what it takes to stop heavy loads of traffic directed towards the cloud server. There are multiple ways by which the cloud helps.
First, the cloud server has far greater bandwidth than a local or private server, meaning that it would take a lot of effort to get the better of the server with a DDoS attack. Second, the cloud is a diffuse resource by nature. It means that the server absorbs malicious traffic before it is able to cause any harm. Third, hosting providers have a team of IT and cybersecurity experts who monitor and mitigate the traffic from DDoS attacks.
- BCDR
BCDR stands for Business Continuity and Data Recovery. Let’s try to understand it with a simple example. What would happen to your data (stored locally) if the hard disk is corrupted or your office premises is hit by an earthquake and everything is destroyed. There’s very little chance that you’ll be able to retrieve your data.
With cloud hosting, your hosting provider ensures that regular and multiple data backups are created on remote servers to ensure business continuity, even during a disastrous situation. If one of the servers gets damaged, it makes data retrieving a straightforward task.
- Encryption of Data in Motion
Data security’s main aim is that no one should tamper the data, and no one should understand it except the sender and the receiver. A popular method to achieve this for data in motion is data encryption. It ensures that even if there is a data breach, the attackers do not understand the data and its security is not compromised.
Along with encryption, authentication also goes hand-hand-hand. It is done with the help of public and private keys. Only the receiver has access to the private key that’ll help in decrypting the data. Cloud hosting uses the latest encryption technologies and strategies to ensure that the hosted data is safe, secure, and travels safely through different mediums.
Conclusion
Cloud hosting is one of the most popular methods used by companies to ensure data security. With the use of the latest strategies, data encryption, and firewalls from the hosting provider, it has eased data migration in a safe and secure manner. Cloud hosting also focuses on the privacy and integrity part of the data; no unauthorised person can access and modify it. Additionally, the technology solves the problem of data storage and associated costs for the companies. In short, it’s a win-win for everyone.
Mohak Arya is a content writer at Ace Cloud Hosting, one of the leading provider of QuickBooks Enterprise Hosting, with more than three years of experience. He has a keen interest in reading and writing about accounting, taxation, accounting trends, and implementing the latest technologies to transform accounting.