Amazon Web Services (AWS) comprehensively leads all the powerful cloud computing platforms globally. Interestingly, it covers more than one-third of the global cloud market. Hence, many companies worldwide choose AWS’s products and services to manage their servers, mobile application development, networking, storage, and security.
It allows companies to shift from expensive data centers to a more flexible cloud environment to store data. As more and more companies go digital, the laws concerning data privacy and security are becoming stringent. Even the businesses using cloud platforms require being more cautious and ensuring that the data must not be lost or misused. Therefore, using and protecting their data is one of their primary concerns. If your company also uses AWS, this article will help enlighten you with five top data protection tips to secure your valuable data in AWS.
1. Encryption
In the previous point, we discussed a way to protect data on the cloud. However, that’s not the only susceptible point of a data breach. If you wish to add top-notch security to your data, you must also find ways to protect data at your premises or data centers. While migrating the data, it is necessary to send only encrypted data. The entire migration process could be a little tricky. Hence you may need professional support to migrate to AWS cloud for risk mitigation.
Sometimes storing encryption keys can also be a challenge for business owners. For this, you may also use AWS Cloud Hardware Security Module (HSM) to safely secure data encryption keys behind your company’s firewall at your data center or premises. HSM also helps you integrate with other applications that use industry-standard APIs, like CNG, JCE, and PKCS libraries.
The HSM service is a cost-effective tool as it permits you to scale up and down by adding or removing its capacity with the changing demand. Luckily, there are not any incurring fixed costs if you deploy HSM.
Add Multiple Layers of Protection
It is common practice to secure the firewalls at the edges of any cloud infrastructure. But for foolproof security, you need more than one gateway. Therefore, it is apt to add firewalls on every virtual network you work with. This allows multiple layers of data protection. You can easily find several next-generation firewalls in AWS Marketplace. You can implement them quickly and multiply the operational efficiency of your entire network security architecture.
Also, these firewalls are customary to protect your data against any cybersecurity threats. It happens as these firewall features may include antivirus TLS, IDS, IPS, VPN, SSL, anti-bot controls, etc.
You can buy firewalls from the AWS Marketplace through third party vendors too. Some include Forcepoint, Cisco FirePower, Juniper vSRX, Check Point, Sophos, and VM-Series. Having these services can boost your security by adding layers of protection. This way, your valuable data stays within a boundary of vital checkpoints even when it stays in a cloud.
3. Tracking and Monitoring Usage
Despite many efforts to set up firewalls and encrypt data, monitoring and tracking user activity is still essential. Even the slightest of misuse or data leakage from the cloud can cause you to lose your data. The task becomes even more challenging in a remote working environment where employees can access information from various devices. Therefore, it is incredibly essential to activate data alert services like AWS Cloudtrail to check for any unusual activity. Cloud trail tracks and keeps a record of user activities and API usage while using AWS services. It also maintains all API call logs and stacks them with accurate timestamps. Such details can help decipher users’ details along with their IP addresses.
You will get an immediate alert if it monitors an unusual activity or analyzes a suspicious event in the Cloudtrail Cconsole. Hence, AWS Cloudtrail makes sure that the company data stays protected from any data privacy or security violation penalties by constantly monitoring activities. Additionally, the Cloudtrail logs can display proof of compliance with various regulations such as SC, HIPAA, and PCI.
4. AWS Key Management Services
AWS Key Management Service (KMS) is probably one of the most used and effective ways to encrypt your valuable data on the cloud. KMS allows you centralized control over your company’s data policy. It also lets you set parameters and allow the easy audit of your company’s usage policies. There is more security as the master keys to your data always remain with a centralized system. Additionally, you can compose a unique master key on KMS, or KMS can do it on your behalf. Either way, the keys remain safe in a protected format for you to retrieve them when needed. Through KMS, you can easily create cryptographic keys and manage their usage across various AWS services deployed by your company.
5. Prevent Any Data Loss
The above four subpoints show how you can protect your data from external theft or attack. However, it is equally essential to keep the data intact. Frequent data losses have detrimental effects on the performance and the financial recovery of your company. It is why most businesses choose to create a backup of their data. It is one of the evergreen methods to prevent any data loss. However, Amazon EBS Snapshots can be a powerful and modern way to answer your AWS data backup-related queries.
It protects all types of data including,
- Boot volumes
- EBS data volumes
- On-premises block data.
Amazon EBS snapshot is a convenient way to create snapshots at a given point in time. It takes the snapshots to store and save them in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and retains them for an extended duration. This type of storage is highly cost-effective as the stored snapshots in base data are only incremental changes and do not incur extra charges. This service also helps you with disaster recovery and adds regulation and compliance by providing internal backup audits. It makes migration across regions or accounts quite effortless.
Conclusion:
Although, there are many ways to add security to your AWS cloud. Those mentioned above are official AWS products and services that make integration a cakewalk. Apart from it, sound data management practices, adding measures to data confidentiality. Using multi-factor authentication and firewalls is equally essential. Having independent data audits periodically also keeps additional checks and prevents data misuse.