Cloud data protection: Best practices and solutions

Traditional security solutions used to be simpler: one local architecture and one perimeter to guard. But in the cloud, where infrastructure is distributed across multiple sites and workloads, the same model no longer applies. If your company uses cloud services, you’ll need to rethink how you protect your data — a firewall perimeter just won’t cut it anymore.

A proper cloud data protection strategy adapts to your significantly wider attack surface. It goes beyond the traditional approach, safeguarding data both at rest and in transit as it moves between users, applications, and cloud services.

Let’s explore what cloud data protection really means, the best practices to rely on, and the tools and techniques that make up an effective strategy.

What’s cloud data protection?

Cloud data protection is a holistic strategy made up of the technology, policies, and procedures to keep information safe in the cloud. Although protecting data is its main focus, you’ll find these technologies help to support the processing and transmission of information in a secure manner. As long as it’s located in the cloud, these strategies will keep it safe.

Since a cloud environment can span across public, private, or hybrid deployments, a traditional perimeter-focused security solution isn’t enough. Data protection in cloud computing adapts to a larger, variable attack surface. In practice, this looks like preventing unauthorized access, identifying and isolating suspicious behavior, and checking for misconfigurations.

Why is cloud data protection important?

Efficiently securing data starts with knowing what content you have and where it lives. In cloud environments, that visibility can quickly break down — especially when integrating new tools and systems.

Cloud data protection solutions give you the unified cloud view you need to properly monitor and defend your content. You’ll be able to see who has access to data and whether there’s any suspicious activity going on. 

A robust cloud data protection strategy helps to:

• Secure applications and data across environments: Get full clarity into how data migrates across applications and connected environments. A singular view lets your security team apply data protection policies consistently across your entire ecosystem.
• Mitigate risk: Identify suspicious behavior or active security threats and prevent breaches before they occur. Detecting threats as early as possible reduces the likelihood of disruption and costly security incidents. 
• Improve access governance: Cloud data protection also extends to governance, ensuring that users only have access to the information they need to do their work (i.e., the principle of least privilege). Minimizing over-provisioning and using least-privilege policies reduces the risk of accidental data exposure.
• Prevent data loss: Introduce safeguards to protect from accidental data deletion, corruption, or malicious exfiltration. Even in disaster scenarios, data loss prevention (DLP) strategies will reduce the scope of an attack and improve your outcomes.

Types of cloud data protection

Cloud data protection includes a range of tools, systems, and policies that all work in tandem. 

No one tool is more important than the rest, each providing something of value to your holistic cloud defenses. Here are the main types of cloud-based data protection solutions. 

Risk evaluation

Risk evaluation tools regularly scan your cloud environment, looking for misconfigurations and overly permissive content access. Flagging these early will help your security team take proactive steps to fix mistakes before unauthorized parties find them. Some risk evaluation tools also scan for unusual activity within your systems, helping to spot and isolate suspicious behavior. 

Backups

Backing up your content often and distributing those copies to different locations gives you a high level of fault tolerance. In a ransomware event, a power outage, or even accidental deletion, having backups to turn to will prevent issues later on. Public cloud data protection tools will encrypt backups to ensure they receive the same level of protection as original content.

Encryption

Encryption standards ensure that data in transit and at rest is only accessible to users with authentication. If encrypted content is hijacked, it will remain unreadable to malicious groups, rendering it useless. Data only becomes readable with the proper decryption keys. Most compliance frameworks include encryption as a baseline precaution, both locally and in the cloud.

Access control

Access controls are policies defining who can access content and how they’re allowed to interact with it. For example, you might let an employee read a file but only let their manager edit that file. Access controls use role-based permissions and identity access management to keep content private. 

How cloud data protection works

Defense-in-depth is a strategy where cybersecurity professionals use several security layers to keep their organizations safe. Instead of relying on a single perimeter, using a range of layers gives your company more comprehensive cybersecurity support. If one layer fails, the other acts as the next level of defense. 

As cloud environments are often distributed, it’s more challenging to wrap layers of protection around a product. Instead, businesses turn to four different technical mechanisms:

1. Identity systems: These control who can access cloud resources and what they can do. You’ll use authentication systems, role-based access controls, least privilege, and zero trust architecture.
2. Compute systems: Protect virtual machines and workloads running in the cloud with compute systems. These use functions like endpoint protection, malware detection, runtime security, and sandboxing.
3. Data systems: These monitor access and prevent unauthorized exfiltration. Main technologies in this stack include encryption systems, backups, data loss prevention (DLP) strategies, and data classification.
4. Network systems: A network security system aims to protect data as it flows between users and cloud systems. Typical network security tools include firewalls, network segmentation, traffic monitoring, and intrusion detection systems. 

By layering these components together and intermixing their technologies, you can build a holistic cloud data protection architecture.

It’s important to note that your cloud service provider may offer some data security tools as part of their platform. Most cloud providers use a shared responsibility system, where both parties have some security responsibilities to fulfill. Checking your cloud service provider agreement can clarify which responsibilities fall to your team.

This is especially the case if you use a multicloud or hybrid strategy, as some providers might offer tools that others expect you to cover.

Cloud data protection best practices

Even after building a strong cloud security posture, your job isn’t completely finished. Cybersecurity takes constant monitoring and iteration. Here are a few best practices you can follow:

• Secure all endpoints: While it's tempting to focus entirely on your major cloud data warehouses and lakehouses, be sure to look out for small-scale integrations. Secure your APIs, every SaaS tool you use, and all connected databases — not just your core infrastructure.
• Encrypt data at rest and in transit: Use industry-standard encryption to keep your data secure. Where possible, make sure to manage your encryption keys safely and apply data protection to them, too.
• Monitor and review usage: Monitoring how users interact with your system can help flag performance bottlenecks and security issues. Constantly tracking and reviewing usage helps you iterate upon your existing systems and improve.
• Enforce strong password policies: Employee accounts are the main target for malicious attacks trying to breach your systems. Don’t make it easy for them! Strong password requirements and regular changes will help prevent unnecessary breaches.

Ensure secure data movement with Fivetran

Across remote users, distributed cloud systems, and SaaS tools, your business has data flowing in from multiple points. Protecting your cloud data doesn’t stop at just storage — you also need to protect data in motion. 

Fivetran’s security features protect data across its entire lifecycle with end-to-end encryption. By offering column-level hashing for sensitive data, granular role-based access controls, and fully automated, managed pipelines that reduce human error, Fivetran provides a holistic defense-in-depth framework for your cloud data.

Discover how Fivetran can secure your data pipelines by booking a demo today.

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