Cloud migration has become common among businesses looking to grow and utilize the cloud’s efficiency and agility. With more and more developments happening in technology these days, stability, efficiency, and flexibility are necessary for businesses that want to remain relevant in a competitive industry. Moving their systems and applications to the cloud allows them to do just that.
However, if you decide to migrate your business to the cloud, you may face many challenges before you can fully realize the benefits. One of the main challenges you’re likely to face is data security and integrity. So, if you plan to execute a project that will require cloud migration, you should be aware of the risks that this migration will pose to the data being moved.
There are a number of ways you can educate yourself about the migration process. On the internet alone, there are plenty of resources available. You could visit: https://www.quadbridge.com/data-center-migration for information on the complexities of data center migrations, for example, or you could consult an IT professional you trust. With the right guidance, your cloud migration process can be seamless and face minimal risks, allowing you to maintain data integrity throughout the process.
That being said, here are a few tips that can help you achieve that.
1. Perform Risk-Based Validation
Risk-based validation is a philosophy used to validate and qualify risks that your business, data, or products are likely to face and the necessary steps you should take to mitigate these risks. In cloud migration, this step is crucial, as it indicates where the focus should be and ensures that protocols are followed to address data quality and reliability.
While you can do the validation yourself, you can also ask your chosen cloud vendor to perform the validation and qualify the cloud system. You should also account for and validate all the electronic data storage locations and have a quality management system that defines roles and frequencies in the validation. After the first validation, you should schedule other revalidations throughout the migration.
2. Select A Reliable Cloud Provider
Migrating to the cloud means that your data security depends more on the cloud provider. Therefore, you need to ensure that the provider is compliant with data integrity regulations. Also, the cloud system they provide should be fit for purpose and should be compatible with the application it will be used in. For those seeking enhanced security and management capabilities, considering a cloud-managed access point can be a valuable addition to your cloud infrastructure.
3. Keep An Audit Trail
An audit trail provides an organization with breadcrumbs to accurately pinpoint the source of a problem in a data breach. The audit trail will also record any changes made to your data during the migration. This audit trail is automatically generated by the system and should contain the following features:
- It shouldn’t allow any user to tamper with it, because this will tamper with data integrity.
- It should track and record every event, such as creation, deletion, reading, or modification, that the data is subjected to during the migration.
- Every event that happens to the data should be assigned to a user to show who accessed or modified the data.
- It should have timestamps that indicate when a particular event happened.
Having an audit trail lets you easily arrive at a problem and solve it before it becomes major. It also helps save time by easily pinpointing a particular event.
4. Perform Data Validation And Automation
Before moving your data into the cloud, you may be required to input the data manually. This may lead to data errors, so it’s important to first validate the data. Also, there can be restrictions placed on the data values to ensure no intentional data manipulation by any user.
You can also adopt automation in data entry. This will help ensure that only the correct data is added to the system. Automation will help flag any incorrect data, thus maintaining the integrity of the data.
5. Train Employees
Cloud migration may be a new concept in your business and for your employees. Letting them handle data migration without any prior training will increase the vulnerability of the data to security and integrity risks.
So, before you start the process, you should ensure that they know how to use the cloud platform. They need to be trained on the cloud software, security standards, and other features regarding data security. This will help them know what to do and what to avoid during the migration.
Conclusion
Cloud migration has several benefits to businesses, as it ensures efficiency and reliability. However, these benefits don’t make cloud migration immune to challenges associated with data integrity. During the migration, your data can be compromised or lost, which will mean the loss of essential information. So, to maintain the integrity of the data, you may want to follow the tips mentioned above.
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