There are plenty of reasons why businesses are moving their operations to the cloud. The cloud helps improve access to data, boosts efficiency, and makes everything scalable. However, taking advantage of cloud technology can come with a few challenges, including meeting privacy regulations, a lack of company resources, and dealing with volumes of uncategorized data.
Thankfully, there is help to get you through the process. We’ve carefully crafted the following guide that you can use as a blueprint for flawless cloud migration.
Best Practices For Flawless Cloud Migration
While every business is different, these four practices can make cloud migration easier regardless of your industry.
1. Categorize Your Data
A reason why you’re moving operations to the cloud is to increase efficiency and make data easier to locate. Moving over volumes of uncategorized data will do little to streamline operations.
Dividing your data into four categories will help you get everything labeled and organized so your staff can easily find the information.
What are the four categories?
- Private data
- Public data
- Classified data
- Restricted data
These categories also help to ensure you’re following all data security and privacy regulations.
2. Create Robust Data Policies
After categorizing the volumes of data, the next step is to create policies that refer to the controls and protections assigned to each category. For example, access controls determine who can access the data. For categories like classified and restricted, this is a must to remain in compliance with privacy and security requirements.
Other controls can include assigning expiration dates and watermarking. Don’t forget to only share the assigned controls with properly authorized users. Someone responsible for creating email marketing lists will need access to public data but probably won’t need information contained in the classified and restricted categories.
3. Establish Authentication Controls
Authentication controls are an essential part of any risk management strategy, and while the cloud is secure, breaches can still occur. Remember those privacy and security compliance requirements? They apply to data stored in the cloud. So, even though you’re not operating and managing the cloud, your stored data is still your responsibility.
Establishing authentication controls allows you to track your data and everything happening to it in real-time. You’ll see when and who accesses the data and if any changes are made. Since you’re watching this in real time, you can take instant steps to mitigate any risks.
Some security tools to consider using include setting up automatic notifications and audibility prompts.
4. Run A Third-Party Audit
One weak spot can leave your data open to potential risks. You can reduce your risks by running a third-party audit. Bringing in an outside team will help spot any vulnerabilities in your system.
You also want to audit your vendors’ control and access policies. Your vendors often have access to some of your stored data. If their practices are leaving you vulnerable to attacks, you may still be held in non-compliance by industry regulators.
Steps For A Smooth Cloud Migration Strategy
You finally have your data categorized, your controls established, and you’ve resolved any potential vulnerabilities. Now, it’s time to start moving the data to the cloud. But of course, this is much often easier said than done.
Thankfully, you can follow a few simple steps to help make the process go flawlessly.
- Have set goals and establish KPIs: KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) help your teams focus on the important data. For example, if you’re creating a holiday marketing email list, your KPI will not include products and services geared for summer. You’re only concerned with data that will help you meet your holiday marketing goals.
- Decide which applications to move to the cloud: Chances are, you’re not going to move everything to the cloud. Consider the implications of moving these applications or leaving them as is. Some considerations include security and cost. Some data may be too sensitive to risk moving.
- Create data-centric protection: The cloud makes it easier to move and share information, but it also comes with inherent risks. Since you don’t just want anyone browsing through your stored data, create protections that reduce these risks.
- Go beyond cloud-based security: The cloud service provider will offer some security protections. You can also take advantage of their IT department. However, this is often not enough to meet some industry standards. Personal healthcare information is an example. Along with using the cloud-based data encryption services, it’s also a good idea to implement additional security protocols. A possible solution is to use end-to-end encryption for additional protection.
- Create a data migration plan and execute your strategy: Decide how to move the data using your best practices. Finally, execute your plan and start accessing your data on the cloud.
Moving To The Cloud Can Be A Flawless Operation
While it may seem complicated at first, flawless cloud migration is possible with planning, data classification, and the right security controls.
Remember, not all applications belong or need to be on the cloud and don’t ignore any security protocols during your migration.