Which action should a customer take to add an extra layer of protection to the...

While cloud providers typically offer built-in encryption, customers should apply additional encryption for sensitive data to maintain defense-in-depth. Encrypting files and folders before uploading them ensures that even if provider-side protections fail, data remains confidential.

WAFs protect applications from web threats, DAM tools monitor database use, and block storage versus file storage is an architecture choice. None of these directly provide an extra protective layer for stored data.

By maintaining control of their encryption keys, customers ensure compliance with data protection standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI DSS. This practice also mitigates insider threats within the provider’s environment and supports secure multi-cloud strategies. Encryption remains the strongest safeguard for protecting sensitive files in public cloud storage.