CDSA

Cloud storage has become incredibly user-friendly for administrators, developers, end users or just about anybody else, with the centralized portal and application programming interface (API) tools facilitating quick and efficient operations.

But cloud storage also continues to have certain challenges too, according to David Boland, VP of cloud strategy at Wasabi Technologies.

For one thing, “despite the protections that cloud service providers have in place, storing your data in the cloud increases your surface attack” area, he said May 9, during the webinar “Management of Cloud Storage: Securing Data and Automating Account Management.”

Therefore, he explained, “users must make sure that they take additional safeguards to protect their root account information,” configure multi-factor authentication (MFA) and use data immutability options.

At the same time, the administrator must oversee all back-end operations that go with maintaining cloud storage and delivering storage services.

“Probably the most difficult portion of managing cloud services [is] overseeing the backend operations that go with maintaining your cloud storage and delivering cloud storage services,” he told viewers.

Fortunately, new storage management tools make it simple to provision storage and forecast capacity trends, according to Boland.

And “backend tools are what makes your life easier,” he said, noting they help users “simplify for the provisioning of storage” and also help “you forecast capacity trends and share usage information of the cloud storage with your end users.”

He cited several best practices for protecting an organization’s data, including: Assume you will be attacked; keep your protection plan up to date; train and test employees; constantly back up data; and protect the storage system.

During the webinar, he also explored the cloud storage management policies that protect data from accidental loss or malicious attack, how to combat cloud account sprawl, monitoring for the bigger picture and the creation and modification of subaccounts for charge-back or show-back purposes.

“I know we have a wide range of folks attending today’s webinar and some of you have a strong understanding of on-prem storage but maybe not the cloud,” he pointed out. Meanwhile, “some folks are already using the cloud but not fully aware of some of the management tools that are at your disposal and I’m sure we’ll have a lot of generalists on the webinar as well who just want to know a little bit about a lot of topics,” he said.

He added: “This is a good opportunity to learn about cloud technology regardless of who you are. And I want to do everything I can to help you have a better understanding of cloud storage and the tools that are available to you.”