What Is Cloud Data Security? | Microsoft Security (2024)

Companies collect data from customers and clients and store that information in the cloud, making the protection of that data a top priority. And as a business’s public cloud footprint grows in size and complexity, so does the need for cloud data security.

Cloud data security refers to the technologies, services, policies, and processes that protect sensitive data and other digital assets—within, across, and outside of clouds. It helps ensure that assets remain safe from security threats, human error, and internal threats like data loss, leakage, misuse from breaches, corruption, theft, and unauthorized access. Sensitive data can include public and nonpublic information such as names, birthdates, government information, IP address, intellectual property, and biometric information.

Cloud-based technologies enable collaboration across many workspaces and geographic regions but can prove most difficult to shield from cyberattacks,ransomware, and data leaks.

People may confuse cloud data security fordata securityor cloud security—but cloud data security is not just about the data you have. It also encompasses data not bound by the constraints of your hardware. This includes:

• Data in use:Securing data used within an application.
• Data in motion:Transmitting data safely as it moves within a network through encryption or additional security measures.
• Data at rest:Protecting data stored in any network location.

As many organizations move from local to cloud storage, chief information officers (CIOs) and security teams must reevaluate how they ensure their sensitive data remains safe.

When an organization’s data can be accessed from many different systems—and is stored across multiple cloud environments—managing it and protecting it from unwanted users becomes harder. Having strong cloud data security helps stop malicious users from accessing your network, ensures business continuity, adds a stricter level of governance, and keeps your business compliant.

Companies continue to gather, access, and store large amounts of data from clients and customers. The constant exposure of sensitive and confidential data and greater multicloud adoption and cloud-native application development could lead to more opportunities for data breaches orcyberattacks. A traditional on-premises data center can no longer be the only solution, and therefore, security teams need to rethink how they can secure data within the cloud. Companies must be able to access, manage, and analyze data with agility and speed, in-house and remotely, more safely and securely. Cloud data security helps achieve that goal.

Companies also need to comply withdata protectionand privacy laws and regulations globally. Ensuring that cloud data protection stays compliant with laws around the world can be incredibly hard as businesses must constantly reestablish and enforce security policies across multiple cloud environments.Many cloud data security solutions have built-in technology to help organizations stay up to date on the latest compliance requirements that they must meet.

Implementing a solid cloud data security solution and properincident responsewill help better protect and secure data in cloud environments.

When choosing a cloud data security solution that works best for your business, you must consider your organizational needs. You need to reduce the risk of threats as much as possible while protecting your data, managing its usage, and always staying operational. Implementing acloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP)helps optimize your data security efforts by correlating intelligence and distilling that data information into a single view.

Data security works by accomplishing the following functions:

As businesses adopt more cloud computing services, many are adopting multiple platforms to accommodate the number of diverse cloud workloads. A cloud workload is a series of processes using a specific application, service, capability, or amount of work that runs on a cloud-based resource, including databases, virtual machines, containers, serverless workloads, or applications. Many CIOs and security decision makers define the full workload as the application and the pieces of technology needed to help complete the workload.

To effectively secure any workload within your business, every level of your digital infrastructure hosted by the workload must also be protected and secure. A robustcloud securityposture helps minimize the threat of cyberattacks and their potential impact on your business. As cloud-based workloads require a different approach than traditional onsite applications, implementing acloud workload protection platform (CWPP)helps you harden your cloud data security posture and safeguard those workloads while ensuring businesses can quickly build, run, and secure cloud applications.

Both cloud workloads and data security are critical components in cloud computing. As cloud workloads are the backbone of almost every cloud-based process in your business, ensuring they are defended at every level becomes one of the highest priorities. Cloud data security also ensures that data workloads and all data types are secured. Because cloud data security safeguards all of the cloud data your workloads handle, both cloud data security and cloud workloads are considered essential components in how businesses protect data in the cloud.

Many businesses are adapting to remote and hybrid work environments all over the world, meaning more access points are vulnerable to threats. Six benefits to implementing cloud data security are:

1. More visibility.A robust cloud data security solution helps you maintain visibility into your data, including the type of data you have, where it lives, and who’s accessing it at any given time.
2. More secure data.Cloud storage helps businesses facilitate safe data transfers, storage, and sharing by adding several layers of advanced encryption for data in and out of transit.
3. Immediate cloud data compliance. The security programs within your solution are designed to meet your compliance requirements constantly. Cloud data loss prevention (DLP) can help discover, classify, and anonymize sensitive data to avoid violations.
4. Easy backups and recovery.By automating data backups and standardizing your data backup processes, cloud data security can monitor those backups and troubleshoot any potential hurdles. And if a challenge does arise, disaster recovery can recover and restore your data and applications within minutes.
5. Advanced incident detection.Cloud data security is one of the most important digital innovations for businesses of all sizes. Many solutions offer the latest security features and tools, including AI and built-in security analytics. These additions help scan for suspicious activity, alerting your team sooner and eliminating possible threats earlier.
6. Lower organizational costs. Cloud data security helps reduce the total cost of ownership, as well as the operational and management responsibilities. Because many cloud data security solutions offer the latest technologies, teams can implement automated processes to streamline integration and continuously alert the team to potential threats.

While storing data in the cloud has many advantages, difficulties could arise during implementation or execution. Without the proper security configurations, you might run into complex challenges that can not only lead to data breaches but also threaten the integrity of your business.

Data breaches occur whenever unauthorized people gain access to sensitive or confidential information, whether intentionally or by accident. This data might include personal identification information, such as social security numbers, and corporate data, such as financial reports and intellectual property.

By taking steps to protect your cloud resources, you can understand and avoid advanced possible security threats today and in the future.

Some common threats are:

• Account hijacking. For users that reuse or use weak passwords—those with only a few characters and numbers—cyberattackers can unearth that information and access any cloud account. Accounts can also be compromised through credential stuffing or password spraying.
• Insider risk. The more people with access to your cloud ecosystem, the more chances you have for insider threat or insider risk. The lack of visibility in the cloud network increases the risk of cyberthreats as users with malicious intent gain unauthorized access. This can even extend to users who inadvertently share or store sensitive information.
• Social engineering. A cyberattacker may trick an employee into providing information and subsequent access to critical systems and data using social engineering techniques, including phishing. By tricking an employee into providing valuable information or access through specific actions, attackers can get control over an employee’s computer and compromise data.
• Unsecure APIs. Many cloud services and apps rely on APIs for functionalities, but APIs might have potential weak spots that attackers could find and use to access cloud accounts. For example, user-based actions might result in API key and credential exposures and pagination attacks.
• Shadow IT. Some individuals that install software or cloud applications and services regularly could run shadow IT or malware. Compromised cloud services may have extensive access rights and, in turn, be susceptible to attackers deleting or exfiltrating data.

By following these cloud data security best practices, you’ll ensure that the controls, technologies, and strategies you require are in place to address cloud-specific data vulnerabilities and protect your confidential information. Some critical elements for your cloud data security strategy include: 

The need for a solid organizational security solution for cloud data grows daily. Having robust cloud infrastructure security helps protect your business from the devastating effects of cyberattacks and malicious threats. Implementing a cloud data security solution with cyber threat intelligence can help you detect threats, respond to them, and recover possible cloud data loss. Offering that level of security across multiple clouds in your organization is vital.

Microsoft Security offers cloud data security solutions to help detect, report, and respond to internal and external threats in real time, wherever you are. Featuring comprehensive cloud data protection, Microsoft Security offers your business the ability to customize its security efforts and response options for a wide range of threats to different workload types, all while improving your security posture and staying compliant.

Learn how to protect your cloud infrastructure >