and logging also lets you spot patterns of use that may indicate a breach and take defensive action .
Confidentiality , or privacy , is the process of making sure that your data remains confidential . This means ensuring that the data cannot be viewed by unauthorized users or eavesdroppers monitoring the flow of traffic across a network . Use encryption to enforce confidentiality , and consider using it whenever data is at rest or moving within a system .
Integrity is the guarantee that data is protected from accidental or malicious modification . For example , ensuring that a hacker cannot take money from your bank account without you receiving a notification .
3 Approaches for Public Clouds
Now that we ’ ve reviewed a few basics , let ’ s focus on dealing with security at the application level on a public cloud . Here are three ways to make your public cloud applications more secure .
1 . Focus on the data .
Application developers should have a laser focus on data security , because that ’ s where most attacks occur , but don ’ t let your applications give hackers a path to that data . Think of data security in the cloud as a series of levels :
The platform level . This is the operating system of the machine instance , including items such as data files . Inadequate protection of the platform is a fundamental flaw that most application developers fail to consider . They may protect access to the data but not the database itself , which is exposed in the platform . In order to deal with this vulnerability , make sure you encrypt the data . That way , if someone copies the data files , they ’ ll be useless . While this is the best approach , it sometimes can cause performance problems , so many developers prefer not to use it .
The database level . Most databases have their own security systems , and when leveraging databases within pubic clouds , it ’ s a good idea to use them . These include data encryption , as well as the ability to allow only certain users to access certain parts of the database based upon authorization level . Make sure you select a cloud-based database that offers these security features .
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