Data and cloud security are the two terms most widely used in this digital world. With the understanding of the difference between data security and cloud security, it is usually possible to say that an organization would like to secure its data and infrastructure. Both concepts tend to play very different roles in safeguarding information, though both play the most important roles.
What is Data Security?
Data security can be defined as the protection of data from unauthorized access, corruption, or theft throughout its lifecycle. Protecting data is one of three states: rest (data in storage), motion (transferring between locations), or in use (actively being processed). Data security includes techniques, policies, and tools that will help to protect data from misappropriation, corruption, or access without authority wherever it resides. It may reside on physical servers, storage devices, or on the way of being transferred over networks.
Key features of data security
Encryption is the process of converting data into a coded form that cannot easily be understood by unauthorized users. Encryption is one of the most used techniques in keeping data safe, especially during transmission or storage.
- Access control: This relates to the confinement of people to specific information about predefined permissions. This encompasses multi-factor authentication, role-based access control (RBAC), and password policies.
- Data Masking: Generates a lifelike replica of data in a fashion that hides sensitive information yet makes it usable for development and testing.
- Data Erasure: Consequently, it ensures completely removing data from a system once it has been determined to be obsolete.
With proper data security, organizations can reduce the opportunities for breach events to happen, protect private data, and meet many regulations, including GDPR or HIPAA.
What is Cloud Security?
Unlike cloud security, which secures data, applications, and services hosted on cloud platforms, more and more organizations are turning to cloud services wherein their cloud environments must be no less secure than their on-premises infrastructures. Cloud security covers the client’s controls as well as the controls that the CSP provides. Cloud-specific security strategies must account for the challenges of the cloud environment as follows:
- Shared Responsibility Model: Cloud security falls in a shared responsibility model between CSP and the client. CSP has normally secured the underlying infrastructure while the client has secured the data, applications, and configurations being managed.
- Cloud Access Security Broker: CASBs help the organization monitor cloud usage and stick to the organization’s security policies across cloud applications.
- Network Security: Cloud security also involves the protection of the network that links users and applications to the cloud. This can be in the form of virtual firewalls, VPNs, and IDS.
- Identity and Access Management (IAM): Only the right users must be afforded entry to cloud-based resources. IAM policies need to be configured carefully so that accidental exposure of sensitive data does not take place.
From our knowledge, cloud security is protecting both the data and the cloud environment as a whole- infrastructure, platform, and software services.
Comparison of Data Security and Cloud Security
From our known basics of data security and cloud security, it is fundamental to outline their main differences. Although these two services protect sensitive information, the scope, tools, and techniques used vary.
- Scope of Protection: Data security is a much broader term as it can be applied to data on a physical server, laptop, or even in a cloud environment. Cloud security is narrower in scope, though, because it involves the protection of only such assets and data that lie within the cloud platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure.
- Responsibility: An organization owns responsibility in data security about everything that has to do with protecting data. Responsibility in cloud security is shared by the provider and the customer: The Provider is in charge of infrastructure, and the customer is responsible for data security within that environment.
- Technology Stack: Data security uses several tools, such as encryption software, firewalls, and data loss prevention (DLP) systems, that are widely applicable to any environment. In contrast, cloud security is tied to particular cloud-native tools like CASBs, IAM policies, and cloud monitoring systems that are cloud-specific.
- Regulatory Compliance: Despite being two of the most important regulatory compliance areas, concentration can differ based on the ecosystem. Organizations may focus more on the data security regulation that must be compliant for storing sensitive information on-premise, while organizations strictly running in the cloud need to ensure that their cloud provider satisfies certain specific compliance standards, such as ISO 27001 or SOC 2.