One of the greatest threats to an organisation, is the risk of a cybersecurity attack. 

IT and business leaders need to adopt the right processes to help their organisations build scalable cloud solutions, while also taking the necessary steps to secure their data and help ensure privacy and compliance. With cyber threats and breaches on the rise, it is critical that sensitive data and business-critical applications are not compromised. When choosing a cloud solution, as the world leading cloud provider in terms of security and privacy, Microsoft Azure is a trusted option.

Challenges of cloud cybersecurity

Cloud solutions offer the ability to manage and deploy applications on an almost limitless scale. Having cloud infrastructure is one of the key drivers of growth and efficiency in a modern workplace. However, when embarking on your cloud journey, security needs to be top of mind. The underlying cloud infrastructure provided by the vendor is secure but are you using the cloud solution securely? 

Common cloud security risks include: 

• Access management and exposure of credentials 
• Data loss and data leaks 
• Legal and regulatory compliance 
• Data privacy and confidentiality 
• Loss of control over end user actions 
• Data sovereignty and control. 

Microsoft Azure

There are many moving parts within a Microsoft Azure cloud environment, which can make organisations unsure about how to properly secure its data and applications. Navigating Azure security is made simple through Microsoft’s four pillars of security.  

When it comes to building a secure organisation, the following four key pillars must be carefully considered. Without sufficient planning, each one of these pillars can be a potential weakness and ultimately a threat to your data security.  

Building a secure organisation – the four pillars of security 

1. Identity

• Embrace identity as primary security perimeter and protect identity systems, admins and credentials as top priorities.  
• Identity and access management protects users’ identities and controls access to valuable resources based on user risk level.  
• Consider multifactor authentication, conditional access and password–less access. 

2. Apps and data

• Align security investments with business priorities. 
• Integrate a growing number of applications with your cloud identity, providing single sign-on capabilities which reduces the risk of having to remember many passwords. 
• Allow documents and emails to only be accessed by authorised personnel. 

3. Infrastructure

• Operate on modern platform and use cloud intelligence to detect and remediate both vulnerabilities and attacks. 
• Migrate servers to the cloud for additional protection from cloud–based security services, and extended security updates for legacy operating systems. 
• Migrate data and applications to a server-less environment, helping to improve security, increase reliability and availability, and reduce costs.  

4. Devices

• Access assets from trusted devices with hardware security assurances, great user experience and advanced threat detection. 
• Manage PC’s, mobile phones and tablets from the cloud, using cloud security services allowing end users to work securely from any location. 
• Protect corporate devices and data, and maintain security and visibility of these assets.  

Protecting your organisation

To ensure these four pillars are secure, you need to build upon strong foundations. This is achieved by identifying existing and potential threats, and developing and implementing a cybersecurity strategy across your organisation. Due to the complex and ever-changing nature of cybersecurity, choosing an experienced cloud services partner to support you is vital.  

At Telefónica Tech, we take a two-phase approach to ensuring cybersecurity in your organisation, adopting leading edge technology and approaches to build a secure foundation and secure your four pillars. This approach embeds security into the framework of your cloud solution and wider organisation. 

Telefónica Tech is a Microsoft gold Data Centre partner with deep Azure expertise. We have a large team of Azure certified Cloud Consultants ready to help you with your journey to the cloud. If you are ready to speak to an Azure specialist get in touch today.