Cloud 101: Securing Your Assets in the Cloud July 5, 2024 – Posted in: Cloud Computing, Cyber Security, IT Support – Tags: cloud 101, cloud computing, Cyber Security, cybersecurity, it support, ITSupport, SoftwareSupport
There are often security concerns when moving to the cloud. Keeping everything physically in your office feels safer. But remember – your server is connected to the internet, which means it’s accessible. It’s also networked to all your PCs, if one of them were infected a virus could spread to the server.
Factors in Getting Breached
There are two major factors in calculating the likelihood of getting breached:
- Likelihood of being attacked.
- Mitigation in place to prevent an attack.
Microsoft or Amazon’s servers are a big target. Microsoft are one of the most attacked platforms in the world. However, they also have some of the most significant investments in security and disaster recovery. Thousands of servers across multiple continents replicating data, supported by an army of technicians with high end, expensive monitoring equipment, firewalls and antivirus solutions.
Your server is a much smaller target, but equally with all the best intentions – your server is not anywhere near as protected as the Microsoft ones.
Doesn’t Being Smaller Protect Me?
Historically the cost of creating and distributing malware was high – it was hard work and it took time. This meant that relying on security by obscurity was a reasonable option. Who’s going to spend 6 months of hard work hacking a single server for an SME business in Maldon?
These days anyone can buy a basic ransomware program off the dark net for £50 and distribute it via email to millions of people with a small amount of knowledge and almost no cost. Everyone will get sent malware at some point and there is a high likelihood that any one person could make a small mistake and get got! Security by obscurity no longer works.
It is certainly possible to protect your own servers, business class firewalls, a robust anti-virus solution, and backups for disaster recovery offer a reasonable level of protection. But you will never match the levels of investment and architecture of someone like Microsoft. Emails, files and authentication in the 365 cloud with multi-factor authentication enabled are as secure or more so than emails, files and authentication on your own server.
If you have any questions about how a you can secure your assets in the cloud give us a call on 01245 265 100 or email .