Best Practices for Improving Cloud Encryption

As businesses increasingly adopt cloud technology, cloud security becomes paramount. Every year, the number of cloud security threats increases, making organizations reconsider their decision to migrate from on-premises and investigate ways to improve cloud security. One way to enhance cloud security is to improve cloud encryption.

Most cloud service providers include primary encryption features and pass the encryption keys to their customers. To decrypt the data, you need to use the given keys but if you lose these keys, you might also lose your valuable data.

Data encryption occurs in three stages: In transit, at rest and while in use.

• Data in transit: When data moves from one place to another, it’s in transit or in motion. Data encryption happens before data transmission to the cloud; endpoints are authenticated, decrypted and confirmed on the data’s arrival. The data in transit secures the data when a third party hijacks any communications while the information moves between two services.
• Data at rest: Encryption at this stage ensures data security while the data is at rest; often when it is stored in software, handled by third parties, devices or units. It includes mobile devices, network-attached storage, hard drives, database servers and physical storage system. Cloud service providers usually use AES for data encryption.
• Data in use: In this phase, encryption safeguards the data when used by the servers to perform calculations. Here, your data is much more prone to cyberattacks and threats. Data in use is a bit challenging to encrypt compared to the other two stages.

In a nutshell, data at rest is fully protected against all types of risks and vulnerabilities. If you use more than one application, data in motion and in use are at significant risk.

There are numerous issues organizations face while encrypting cloud data, but using some best practices to improve cloud encryption can help keep data safe. 

Security Issues with Encrypting Cloud Data

Gartner recently warned the organizations that they must draft and implement a robust security plan for encrypting data in the cloud. If a company fails to encrypt data, regardless of its size, it faces financial and reputational damage. Several cloud storage security issues arise when encrypting cloud data. Some of these security issues are:

• Passwords and Encryption Security Keys: If the password gets stolen or compromised, it can lead to the permanent loss of your valuable data. If left to their own devices, users often set easy-to-break passwords which allow hackers to access your data by using advanced tools, credential stuffing or brute force attacks. Using a reliable security key or password manager reduces the chance of data breaches.
• Cloud Credentials: Encrypting cloud data requires a high level of collaboration from other team members. However, this can be challenging. For example, if an employee shares a crucial file with confidential information included, it must be encrypted and then sent. The IT staff might find this annoying and time-consuming to first encode and then decode the data, so they skip these steps and send the file anyway. This loophole invites hackers and results in a data breach.
• Rogue Devices: The devices you use to access your data are a prime area of weakness. Remote work and BYOD policies introduce greater risk.

Improving Cloud Encryption

The cloud providers’ standard encryption features aren’t nearly robust enough to guarantee data security. You should consider additional steps to improve cloud encryption.

Symmetric Encryption

To ensure the safety of your data in the cloud, encrypt it with a symmetric key. This method decrypts the data with the current key and, later, re-encrypts it with a new key. However, as the amount of data increases, both the decryption and re-encryption processes become more difficult. It is a time-consuming process and, in addition to the lengthy sequence schedule, the computing power cost also increases. 

Re-Encryption

Decryption and re-encryption are essential steps for altering the keys used for encryption. It guarantees the eternal security of your data, and security standards like the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) are based on this encryption method.

Envelope Encryption

As mentioned earlier, simple symmetric encryption increases costs. To reduce those costs when you want to change the keys, you can use envelope encryption; similar to digital envelope technology. It stores, transfers and uses the encrypted data by enclosing the data keys in an envelope rather than directly encrypting and decrypting the data with CMIKs.

There’s a significant drawback to envelope encryption: It does not ensure that the data within the envelope remains unchanged. Anyone with the symmetric key can decrypt and re-encrypt the data without your knowledge, causing essential issues.

Envelope Encryption with Hashing

To boost the security of envelope encryption, add a hash of the encrypted data to the envelope. A hash adjusts a vast amount of data into a fixed size by making a sign to compare for authentication after decryption. Envelope encryption with hashing increases the data’s integrity as it’s impossible to break the password and access the decrypted data.

Other Ways to Improve Cloud Encryption

Apart from the steps mentioned above, here are some other tips for improving cloud encryption:

Invest in a Cloud Data Warehouse

Investing in a cloud data warehouse is another way to minimize the security threats within a cloud environment. These warehouses create backups of data regularly and offer a better disaster recovery option. Various cloud data warehouse solutions have different internal controls that help to protect cloud-based data. The advanced security tools and encryption safeguards crucial business data from external threats. Also, most cloud data warehouses include special privacy-boosting tools like MFA and VPN that further limit the chances of a cloud data breach. 

Local Data Backup

To secure data in the cloud, make sure that you’ve correctly backed up your data. Always have multiple copies of your data so you are able to access it even if your original data gets permanently deleted or stolen.

Deploy Multifactor Authentication

Organizations should instruct their cloud users to protect their devices with MFA. It is one of the cheapest yet most effective security methods available to keep hackers or any other unauthorized person from accessing your cloud apps and other sensitive business data. 

Employee Training Programs

Hackers can use various social engineering techniques like phishing to fool employees and steal their login credentials. Weekly or monthly training programs and seminars should be conducted to help employees understand that cybersecurity is a shared responsibility and to help them detect such malicious attempts that can put their organization’s security at risk. 

Encryption plays a vital role in protecting your data in the cloud, and effective encryption practices ensure that data remains secure within the cloud environment.