Cloud provider security opportunities and best practices

It's no surprise that almost everyone in the IT industry is talking about the cloud. While cloud computing does have its benefits, customers often express concerns around information security and resiliency. Channel partners have an opportunity to offer their expertise and capabilities to enable customers to better protect their information in the cloud.

Despite benefits of speed, flexibility and cost efficiency, many organizations are still slow to adopt public cloud environments because of security concerns over where their data goes and what happens to it once it's in the cloud.

Value-added resellers can share knowledge and best practices, and become trusted solutions advisors to customers who are considering a transition to the cloud environment or are already in it.

Channel partners can help keep customers and their data secure in the cloud by educating customers on an information-centric security approach that also includes best practices.

Symantec recommends a three-part security best practice strategy that partners can utilize to better service their customers.

As a first step to ensuring a customer's data stays safe in the cloud, value-added resellers must first assess and understand what the business' needs and requirements are. Find out what their tolerance for risk and protection is and help them determine what information should be stored in the cloud and what should be kept within the walls of the data centre.

Cloud services are continuing to evolve, so it's important for value-added resellers to stay up-to-date on the latest trends and threats by engaging with and learning from their security vendor partner. Customers may have questions including, how secure and accessible is my data, how easily will I be able to migrate my data to another platform once my contract is up and can I move security configurations between providers? Customers will look to partners to help find answers to these questions and seek expert advice.

The second best practice is to assess and review a customer's existing security policies, practices and solutions, which will give partners the visibility they need to make the appropriate recommendations. Ultimately, this can lead to higher margin services opportunities. It's also important to regularly engage with customers and educate employees on the importance of using strong authentication and encryption solutions to add an additional layer of security for customers in the cloud.

Finally, it's important for your customers to have a strong governance framework in place and ensure that their security practices and policies are frequently monitored and tested. By advising your clients to conduct a robust risk-assessment, and ensuring a set of security controls, governance framework and security and data management solutions are place, businesses will be better prepared to handle the evolving threats and risks associated with cloud environments.

Source - echannelline.com