Three ways to protect sensitive information stored in a cloud

According to Mike Coppola, the cloud can be a huge advantage for anyone who wants to store vast amounts of information at less cost and with ease of access and availability. However, cloud services can also come with a number of risks such as data security dangers that can result in revenue losses or reputational setbacks.

On that note, Mike Coppola shares three effective ways to protect sensitive information stored in a cloud.

Proper encryption

Mike Coppola can’t stress enough the importance of not just encryption but proper encryption. Proper encryption will prevent a hacker who has penetrated the firewalls from reading, editing, or deleting files. The safest way is to encrypt key data residing in the source server and manage the keys on one’s own.

Data back-up

Anyone who’s worked with computers knows just how important data back-ups are. Since even encrypted data can be deleted or damaged, it’s a smart move to always create backups or frequent snapshots of data. These create an offline copy as well as keep data while adding new versions when there are changes. Backup copies should also be secured through replication or erasure coding across different zones in the cloud.

Data classification

To do this, people should first identify the data that’s processed or stored in the cloud, then classify the information based on sensitivity, including the data’s regulatory requirements. After that, they may set or define the rules by which specific data classes must be stored, transmitted, archived, moved around, or destroyed.

Mike Coppola was a lieutenant with the Palisades Interstate Parkway Police Department. In addition to consulting services, he offers secure mobility products and mission-critical infrastructures such as data protection, disaster recovery, and cloud storage to law enforcement agencies. For more on Mike and his work, visit this