As cloud computing has become the latest buzz in the IT industry, companies of various shapes and sizes are adopting this technology with open arms. A study by IDC and Forrester illustrates that cloud technology in India is expected to reach $3.5 billion by the year 2016. The report further explains that SMBs will be mainly contributing to this rising share. 

The computing landscape, on the other hand, is surrounded by the data security risks, which has affected millions of clients. In this light, it is important for the vendors to undertake adequate risk management precautions to secure clouds against data or network breaches. 

Lets take a quick glance at how IT environments are susceptible to security breaches and the ways to protect your mission critical data and web applications against information theft.

A research conducted by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) illustrates that increasing use of the cloud hosting services can amplify data breach risk by three times. This implies that for every one percent rise in the usage of cloud-based applications, there is a three percent surge in the likelihood of information infringement. 

As per the technology pundits, in most of the cases information theft happens due to the ignorance of data security policies by the corporate. The employees unknowingly expose their important information without encrypting it. Other factors causing infringements include losing computer/laptops, sharing information with business associates whose systems are susceptible to cyber attacks, and taking business data home on storage devices like USB drives, CDs, mobile phones, etc. In all the mentioned cases, unauthorized user access leads to information breach.  

The other reason for data contravention is intrusion of external elements like crime syndicates or hacktivists, gaining entry to the network via unpatched endpoints. Their main objective is data vandalism.

Now, lets dig a little deeper to check the best practices to avoid cloud incursions:

Restricting User Access: The two major attacks within the cloud environment are user attacks & cyber attacks. To prevent these attacks, enterprises need to regularly monitor various avenues of intrusion. Some of the tools used by the cloud server hosting providers for ensuring security of the cloud infrastructure are Web security, patching, continuous deployment and audits of companys security policies, endpoint security, and encryption capabilities. 

Security Intelligence: In order to identify as well as respond to the security threats, real time alerts are considered as a more effective way to flag suspicious network attacks. These alerts are a better way to gauge security checks when data provided is correlated with the known global threats.

Data Protection Policies: The best way to stop fallout is formulate policies to create vigilance in the system. A unified protection policy is a sure shot way to combat external threats. 

In this way, an organization can protect it sensitive data against security breaches when sending its files to the cloud and mitigating risks before they become systemic.