Category: Cloud

Understanding the Risks of Cloud Migration

Understanding the Risks of Cloud Migration and Security Measures to Mitigate Them

Thanks to our experts at Protected Harbor, we’ve released a new infographic that can help your organization or business to reduce your cloud migration security risks. This infographic includes key security tips and advice to help you make the right cloud migration decisions. Download the infographic now to learn more! And don’t forget to visit our blog for more tips and advice.

As your organization evaluates cloud migration, it’s critical to understand the risks. Security is a top concern for many businesses, so before you move your company’s data and services to the cloud, you must understand how to mitigate any potential risk. Understanding cloud security risks are essential for an effective migration strategy. The first step in this process is understanding the potential risks of migrating your organization to the cloud.

After all, not every business can trust third parties with their data. But with the proper security measures in place, moving to a cloud platform can benefit almost any business.

Download our infographic to understand how to reduce cloud migration security risks in a quick overview, and continue reading the blog for more information.

What Is Cloud Migration?

Cloud migration is the process of moving an organization’s data, applications, and other business elements from on-premises data centers to cloud computing services. Several types of cloud computing are available, including public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud, each with its own benefits and challenges. Cloud migration requires careful planning and execution to ensure that sensitive information remains secure and protected from data breaches.

Moving apps, data, and other digital assets from an on-premises data center to the cloud is also cloud migration. These may be programs that have been specially created for the organizations or ones that they have licensed from a different vendor. There are various methods for moving to the cloud, including:

  • “Lift and shift” refer to moving apps as-is.
  • Modifying applications slightly to facilitate their cloud migration
  • Application rebuilding or remodeling to make them more suitable for a cloud environment
  • Changing from legacy applications that don’t support the cloud to new ones that cloud vendors offer.
  • “Cloud-native development” refers to the process of creating new cloud-based apps.

What is CSPM?

Cloud security posture management (CSPM) is critical to cloud migration strategies. It involves assessing and managing the security posture of an organization’s cloud infrastructures, including threat detection and data masking. CSPM helps organizations ensure their cloud resources are secure, compliant, and operating under the appropriate security controls.

One of the main benefits of cloud migration is the ability to take advantage of the scalability and flexibility of cloud computing services. Cloud resources can be easily scaled up or down as needed, allowing organizations to quickly respond to changing business needs. However, migrating to the cloud can also introduce new security challenges, such as the risk of data breaches and unauthorized access to sensitive information.

To mitigate these risks, organizations should carefully consider their cloud migration strategies and take steps to ensure that their cloud infrastructures are secure and compliant with applicable regulations. This can include implementing access controls, monitoring for threats, and regularly reviewing and updating security policies and procedures. By taking a proactive approach to cloud security, organizations can enjoy the benefits of cloud computing while minimizing the risk of data breaches and other security threats.

What are the Key Benefits of Cloud Migration?

The advantages of the cloud, which include hosting applications and data in a highly effective IT environment that can increase factors like cost, performance, and security, are the overarching goal of most cloud migrations.

Elastic scalability, a need to reduce costs or convert from a capital expenditure to an operating expenses model, and a requirement for new technologies, services, or features only available in a cloud environment are essential drivers for cloud migration.

The flexibility of corporate IT teams to deliver new services and expand the company to meet changing business requirements is enhanced by cloud computing, which is maybe even more significant.

Security Risks of Cloud Migration

cloud migration infographicBecause cloud migration is susceptible to several attacks, careful planning is required. Sensitive data is exchanged during migration, leaving it open to attack. Additionally, attackers may obtain access to unsecured development, test, or production environments at different points in a migration project.

Plan your cloud migration efforts in advance of the following dangers:

Application Programming Interface (API) vulnerabilities: APIs serve as communication routes between environments. At every step of the cloud migration process, APIs must be protected.

Blind spots: Using the cloud requires giving up some operational control. Before migrating, check the security your cloud provider offers and how to enhance it with supplemental third-party security solutions.

Compliance requirements: Verify that your intended cloud environment complies with the necessary standards. This comprises the organization’s protocols for ensuring the security of cloud workloads, data, and access, as well as compliance certifications issued by the cloud provider. As part of the standards for compliance, all of these may be audited and will be.

Unchecked Growth: Moving to the cloud is a continuous process. The company will probably add more resources, use new cloud services, and add more apps after moving applications to the cloud. Once SaaS apps are up and operating in the cloud, it is normal to begin employing more SaaS applications. A significant operational problem exists in securing these new services and applications effectively.

Data loss: Moving to the cloud requires the transfer of data. If there are issues with the migration process, it is crucial to ensure that data is backed up. With rigorous key management, all data is transferred across encrypted channels.

5 Ways to Mitigate Cloud Migration Security Risks

Here are a few best practices that can help improve security during and after cloud migrations:

  1. Develop a Plan– Planning before migration and executing successfully is essential. Use automated tools and optimization to outline the expertise, resources, and tooling you need to start.
  2. Start Small- To reduce the fear and accelerate cloud adoption, start with an automatic workload lift and shift over in small portions.
  3. Leverage SaaS Adoption– Utilize your business units to promote cloud adoption by investing in Software-as-a-Service.
  4. Set Security Standards– Develop baseline security standards by collaborating with your governance team.
  5. Use Managed Services- Organizations should monitor their cloud security posture from the control plan to asset configuration. They can partner with a Managed Services Provider for efficient migration.

Conclusion

Migrating to the cloud can be a great way to boost your company’s productivity and scalability. But it’s essential to understand the security risks first. The best way to mitigate these risks is to work with a reputable cloud provider committed to data security.

Having the right security practices in place for your team is also important. With the proper security measures, you can enjoy all the benefits of migrating to the cloud. That’s why we have created an infographic to help you out. Download today and get started with your cloud migration.

What’s a fully managed backup and data recovery service

whats a fully managed backup and data recovery service

 

What’s a fully managed backup and data recovery service

 

fully managed backupData backups are the core of the online business. Through data backup and recovery, you can create and store copies of your business data that you can use to protect your organization against data loss. Data backup aims to recover the lost data due to a primary data failure caused by a malicious attack, hardware or software failure, data corruption, or accidental deletion of data.

You often hear about major data breaches and incidents that render your data unusable and inaccessible. These can cause downtime to your business and other critical issues. Whether you lose data due to a malicious attack, an human error, or a system failure, you should have a data recovery plan.

Protected Harbor data backup and recovery is a fully managed service and a comprehensive solution to restore and backup data. We help you face your security challenges by providing a secure backup solution to recover data loss, whether on-premise, cloud, or hybrid. Our on-premise services save data directly to your BDR appliance, and we use additional offsite backups for protecting cloud services.

Our services not only recover your business from downtime but also keep it running continuously through every disaster, from human errors to malicious attacks. Protected Harbor’s fully managed services will combine data backup and recovery into a single comprehensive plan if you want to cover all of your bases.

 

On-premise backup and disaster recovery solution

It is essential to understand that backup and disaster recovery are crucial to minimizing the outcomes of unexpected downtime on your business. Organizations can lose revenue due to data loss caused by natural disasters, security breaches, human error, and ransomware attacks. Any rest in the industry can hinder customer interaction, reduce employee productivity, halt business processes, and destroy data.

There is a need to understand the importance of backup and disaster recovery. For this, you have to differentiate between both. Backup is a process of creating extra copies of data, while disaster recovery refers to the quick restore access to IT resources, applications, and data after an outage.

On-premise backup and disaster recovery processes can help you restore data rapidly. Keeping sensitive data on-premise may seem appealing while complying with strict privacy and data regulations. Disaster recovery from an on-premise environment can be challenging because your entire data center would be impacted if a power outage or natural disaster hit.

Protected Harbor backup and disaster recovery services offer a comprehensive, fully managed solution to handle on-premise backup. BDR framework is a dynamic process that helps organizations prepare for uncontrollable events. Our IT professionals make strategic plans to store and backup data securely and eliminate risks.

 

Cloud-based BDR service

There is no way to analyze and predict the future. Due to the rise in cyber-attacks, hardware and software malfunction, natural disasters, and data breaches have become essential to back up and recover data to prevent downtime in your business. Gone are the days when companies used manual recovery methods. Now, BDR solutions provide fast, secure, monitored, and rapid data backup and recovery through a cloud-based architecture.

Protected Harbor guarantees you can access applications and data anywhere, even during a major disaster. Today’s businesses need to be always available. That’s why acquainted BDR solutions are not enough to meet their needs. We offer backup and disaster recovery solutions for all platforms.

Cybercrimes are more common these days. Our backup encryption can help you protect your data from malicious and ransomware attacks. Protected Harbor backup and disaster recovery services avoid the fear of ransom scenarios and data loss. Our application-level monitoring helps you prevent unauthorized software and applications from corrupting backups.

Cloud-based BDR solution provides data protection reliability, speed, and continuous uptime. Not all businesses have the exact requirements for saving and restoring corporate data. Cloud-based backup and disaster recovery solutions provide scalable, flexible, and budget-friendly data protection services.

 

incident response plan

Data backup and recovery plan testing

Data recovery plans are designed to protect organizations against disasters, but sometimes it’s not enough. You can’t determine that a running process or disaster recovery plan will never fail after a disaster. Many incidents occur when organizations discover that nothing was backed up after and while data gets lost.

The purpose of disaster recovery testing is to find the flaws in your recovery plan. So you can solve the issue before any permanent damage. For managed service providers, it’s essential to provide disaster recovery testing.  Perform regular testing to ensure that your data recovery system is restoring data efficiently.

Protected Harbor performs disaster recovery testing by following compliance standards. We do regular testing because scarcely backup testing can put your organization at data failure risk during breaches and disasters. Putting off testing can prove devastating, especially if your company is going through a major disaster.

 

Protecting Your Data

Companies are increasingly relying on technology to manage their day-to-day operations. As a result, data loss prevention has become a top priority for businesses of all sizes. One effective way to ensure business continuity and protect against data loss is to use cloud backups.

Cloud backups provide a secure, reliable, and cost-effective way to store business data, and they can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection. This makes them an ideal solution for businesses with remote or mobile workforces.

In addition to cloud backups, businesses should also consider using data recovery software or data recovery companies to help them recover lost data in case of a system failure or data corruption. These services can help businesses minimize downtime and return to normal operations quickly.

When choosing a cloud backup or data recovery service, it’s important to consider factors such as service level agreements, pricing models, and the level of support provided. For example, some services offer 24/7 support and guaranteed response times, while others may only offer support during regular business hours.

Another important consideration is the type of storage media used for backups. While SD cards and other physical storage devices can be useful for some applications, they are not always the most reliable or secure option. Cloud backups offer a more secure and scalable solution and can be easily integrated into existing IT infrastructure.

 

Final words

Off-site storage and backup processing are only part of disaster recovery planning. Organizations should also create written, comprehensive disaster recovery plans that encompass all of the company’s core activities and functions. The plan should include processes that have been recorded and tested and that, if implemented, will assure the continuous availability of vital resources and the continuity of operations.

We provide backup and disaster recovery services by simplifying the process and storing all your data in cloud storage and secure remote servers. Protected Harbor maintains your backup schedule and provides 24/7 monitoring and expert-level support. Avoid operational and financial impacts of data loss by having a strategic plan for data recovery.