Your Journey to the Cloud is Complete. Here’s How You Maintain Security.

The past few years have seen more and more governmental agencies migrate to the cloud. While some of these migrations may have been driven by the rapid pivot to remote work, there’s one overarching factor that’s pushing these agencies to embrace the cloud: enhanced security.

It’s true that issues around security don’t magically vanish after migration. Once all data is securely moved to its destination and the last mailbox has been migrated, how do these governmental agencies maintain security? The answer has to do less with technical specs and more with the human element of operating in the cloud.

Security in the cloud

The age-old argument for the cloud goes like this: Size equals security. Companies like Microsoft have vastly more resources to create cutting-edge secure systems than the average state or local agency. Migrating to the cloud allows smaller agencies with less resources to tap into the power and security of the cloud, along with the high level of expertise that these companies provide to smaller users.

However, the security of a system is only as strong as its weakest user. You can build and implement the most sophisticated security measures, but if someone opens the gates to the bad guys, all of that sophistication becomes moot. One of the biggest post-migration security challenges is making sure users understand how to navigate their new environment while working securely. This can be a bigger challenge in the nonprofit and governmental sector.

When compared with their private-sector counterparts, governmental agencies often aren’t as adaptable to change. There are a number of reasons why sweeping changes — such as migrations to the cloud — take longer and require a more careful hand.

Governmental agencies prize experts rather than generalists. This means that while many of those workers are more than adept at their specific job duties, they often aren’t asked to do work outside of their limited sphere. Government work has always been process-oriented. When those processes are disrupted or changed outright, those employees often struggle to adapt because it goes against the process-oriented nature of how they operate.