Securing the Cloud: Best Practices for Cloud and Infrastructure Services in Regulated Industries

Cloud and infrastructure services have rapidly been adopted by heavily regulated industries like healthcare, legal services, and finance. This adoption speed is driven by agility, innovation, and scalability.

In 2025, industries like healthcare reported that cloud adoption rates were more than 70%, with 48% of company data being stored in the cloud for data storage, and 41% of companies storing data on backup and data disaster recovery on the cloud, leveraging the infrastructure. 

For financial services, cloud adoption reached 70% in 2023, and 82% of financial services utilized a hybrid cloud model to balance control, resiliency, and value creation. The adoption of financial services was moving their core operations to the cloud while optimizing operations with hybrid or multi-cloud to create value, agility, and simplicity in performance. 

However, the speed of cloud and infrastructure service adoption demonstrates a more pressing need to reconcile innovation introduced by cloud adoption in permitted regulatory frameworks and with adequate protective measures for security. 

Specifically, the regulated sector has regulatory regimes, such as the healthcare regulatory HIPAA and the finance regulatory PCI-DSS, which are driven by the need for data protection and privacy. Additionally, nearly 68% of companies’ catalogs reported data breaches as a cloud security issue. 

Companies in regulated sectors focusing on digital transformation must know best practices regarding compliance and security without inhibiting their ambition to realize their potential in adopting innovative cloud infrastructure. Moreover, with more than 94% of companies adopting cloud services, this demonstrates the important need for secure and compliant cloud strategies in regulatory regimes. 

6 Best Practices of Cloud and Infrastructure Services You Cannot Miss!

1. Understand Compliance Requirements from Day One

Regulatory frameworks such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and SOC2 address data protection and compliance on a case-by-case basis and differ based on due diligence and data type. For instance, HIPAA is geared toward healthcare companies regulated by HIPAA guidelines to protect personal health information (PHI). 

GDPR is legislation most relevant to individuals in the European Union concerning data privacy and protection, a part of which focuses on due diligence, including consent, breach notification, and data minimization.

Also, PCI-DSS prioritizes securing payment card data for businesses that process card deals with strict, specialized conditions for managing cardholder information. Meanwhile, service organizations, especially cloud providers, use the broader SOC2 framework to ensure security, availability, confidentiality, data integrity, and segregation controls.

It is crucial to map compliance requirements to cloud and infrastructure services from the outset. This enables organizations to embed adequate controls and protections directly into the cloud architecture rather than retrofitting them later, which can be risky and costly. 

This lessens the possibility of a violation, damage to one’s reputation, and heavy fines. By including stakeholders in the early stage of adopting cloud and infrastructure services, companies can optimize audits and avoid making duplicate efforts. They can also build trust with customers and partners via a commitment to data protection and adherence to regulatory requirements. 

2. Implement a Zero Trust Security Model

Incorporating the Zero Trust security model shifts the security landscape from implicit trust to a “Never Trust, Always Verify” approach for the users, devices, and applications. This model needs businesses to authenticate and authorize each aspect, irrespective of whether inside or outside the traditional network perimeter, before granting access to resources. 

This procedure begins with a comprehensive evaluation of all users, applications, and devices interacting with the network, cataloging roles, accessing requirements, and security postures within cloud and infrastructure services. 

Role-Based Access Control

Next, Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is established to ensure that each user or device receives only the minimum level of access, which is essential for their function. Identity federation allows secured authentication across systems and cloud environments without having to duplicate credentials. To improve identity verification for every access, multi-factor authentication (MFA) is necessary.  

Another necessary component of Zero Trust is network segmentation, or separating the network into smaller, isolated zones, using technology like virtual local area networks (VLANs), software-defined networks (SDNs), and firewalls. Micro-segmentation limits lateral movement by attackers, limiting the ultimately damaged space with breaches contained to small segments and protecting sensitive assets. 

Further, companies enforce security policies and update them based on risk evaluation and observed behaviors. By integrating these aspects—strong identity and access controls, granular segmentation, and constant monitoring—organizations can easily minimize the attack surface and protect against current cyber threats through cloud and infrastructure services.

3. Encrypt Data at Rest, In Transit, and During Use

Regardless of location, data encryption—in motion, at rest, or in use—is essential to total data protection! E2E (end-to-end encryption) protects sensitive information over the entire lifecycle: in rest (processed), in transmission (traveling), and in use (active on a device). 

Encrypt data at rest using a secure encryption algorithm (AES-256) to minimize unauthorized access. Store encryption keys securely by using hardware security modules (HSMs) and/or cloud-native key management services.

Secure protocols like TLS/HTTPS are used to protect data while it is in transit, preventing it from being intercepted and changed. For data in use, advanced isolation and encryption methods, for example, secured enclaves or confidential computing, are used to encrypt data while it is processed in the cloud and infrastructure services.

Tokenization and pseudonymization are two best practices for minimizing the risk of exposing sensitive data while maintaining utility for business operations. The goal of tokenization is to substitute non-sensitive tokens for sensitive data. 

4. Leverage Secure Cloud Architecture and Infrastructure Design

Leveraging secured cloud and infrastructure services or design initiatives by utilizing the well-architected frameworks provided by cloud vendors (AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure), since frameworks such as AWS Well-Architected Framework, Google Cloud’s Security Pillar, and the Azure Well-Architected Framework describe a structured approach for applying security to the design, deployment, and operational life cycle.

Businesses emphasize principles like “Secure By Design” and “ Secure By Default,” advocating for layered security, risk assessment, and a clear understanding of shared responsibility models between customers and cloud providers. By following solid frameworks, companies can meet regulatory compliance, minimize exposure, and ensure that security is not a bolt-on element of every cloud workload and service. 

Another important area of secured cloud design involves utilizing an isolated environment, such as a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) or private subnets, to separate sensitive workloads from insecure workloads. 

This networking segmentation approach is an effective way to limit the potential blast radius of a security event, which can also help mitigate the threat and defend classified content and critical assets. By automatically, predictably, and consistently documenting the provisioning of cloud and infrastructure service resources, Infrastructure as Code (IaC) introduces security features.

In addition, teams use secure IaC by creating version-controlled and policy-checked templates (e.g., ARM, Terraform, and CloudFormation), running static and dynamic analyses to detect misconfigurations, and deploying them with security checks integrated into the CI/CD pipeline.

5. Continuous Monitoring, Auditing & Incident Response

Continuous monitoring, auditing, and incident response are the foundation of today’s cybersecurity programs. By implementing Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), companies can use advanced tracking and correlation of data (and incidents) in the IT environment for their systems, offering them a basis for real-time tracking and analysis. 

This method allows organizations to track suspicious behavior and react to threats to develop cloud or infrastructure services. 

Automated vulnerability scanning and continuous penetration testing help support this overall strategy by proactively identifying and remediating vulnerabilities before an attacker can exploit them. Automated security and compliance audits help organizations remain compliant between formal audits and address the regulatory risk gap that traditional or periodic assessments often fail to address.

A well-documented and practiced incident response plan can greatly reduce the impact of security breaches. Internal audits are useful for reviewing and updating incident response policies to ensure that the processes they embody function as intended and adhere to best practices and regulatory compliance. 

Additionally, with regular training and tabletop exercises, the teams are ready and able to respond with urgency when an incident occurs unexpectedly. With continuous tracking, integrated with incident response workflows, and regular proactive automated auditing procedures, organizations can achieve faster identification and response times, become more compliant, and develop an adaptive security posture leveraging cloud and infrastructure services for evolving threats.

6. Choose Cloud Partners with Proven Compliance Credentials

When choosing appropriate cloud partners, it is important to prioritize vendors with strong compliance characteristics that can best safeguard your data in strong frameworks. 

Next, evaluate your potential provider’s compliance options and confirm that they maintain a compliance-ready infrastructure supported by third-party certifications, such as ISO 27001, which certifies information security management, and FedRAMP, which authorizes cloud service providers to work with US Federal Agencies.

In addition to certification, they review Service Level Agreements (SLAS), documents that determine security responsibilities, compliance responsibilities, and incident response needs through cloud and infrastructure services. Good Service Level Agreements identify who is responsible for different aspects of security between the provider and the customer, to help reduce ambiguity, and assist with regulatory compliance.

They also offer recourse and accountability when the vendor violates the security expectations outlined in the contract and incurs a breach. Businesses can control availability risk by selecting cloud vendors with best-in-class compliance certifications and SLAS for security. 

This allows suppliers to operate in their cloud space while minimizing risk, saving time in audits, and remaining compliant with regulations via cloud and infrastructure services. 

Conclusion

When working to secure our cloud infrastructure in a regulated industry, compliance with regulations is only part of the equation; long-term resilience is also essential. By embedding best practices as part of a risk-based approach to compliance, data encryption, periodic audits, access rules, and ongoing tracking, enterprises can better secure sensitive data while providing more agility in a digital-first world.

When supported by experts, organizations can leverage compliance complexity into competitive differentiation! As a leading web development company, we at Practical Logix assist businesses in regulated sectors in securing, optimizing, and modernizing cloud and infrastructure services. Connect with us today to ensure your cloud environment meets the highest security and compliance standards.