Encryption

Encryption is the process of converting data into a code to prevent unauthorized access. In the cloud, it's a critical layer of defense, and it's typically applied in two states: in transit and at rest. 'Encryption in transit' protects your data as it travels between your computer and the cloud, or between services within the cloud. The standard protocol for this is Transport Layer Security (TLS), the successor to SSL. When you see 'https://' in your browser's address bar, you are using TLS. It creates a secure, encrypted tunnel for data transmission, preventing eavesdropping or man-in-the-middle attacks. Cloud providers make it easy to enforce TLS for their services, such as when connecting to a load balancer or a database. 'Encryption at rest' protects your data while it is stored on disks in the cloud provider's data center. This safeguards your data even if the physical storage media is compromised. Most cloud storage services (like Amazon S3, EBS, and Azure Blob Storage) offer server-side encryption (SSE). With SSE, the data is encrypted automatically before it's written to disk and decrypted when you access it. Cloud providers typically offer several key management options, from having the provider fully manage the keys (SSE-S3), to using a dedicated key management service (SSE-KMS), to having the customer provide their own keys (SSE-C).