With the introduction of cloud computing, data storage and access with its various facilities have witnessed improvements; yet, there exist security vulnerabilities that challenge the cloud environment. This paper, therefore, puts forward a sophisticated hybrid encryption scheme that combines both AES-256 and RSA for enhanced security and efficient key management. Classic encryption methods based on RSA face computational overhead while AES faces distribution challenges of secret keys, leading up to possible risk for security attacks. In our approach, AES-256 is used for fast data encryption, while RSA is applied for key exchange to prevent unauthorized access vigorously. Under performance evaluation, we found a considerable boost in the encryption efficacy with a reduction in encryption time by 35% and optimized decryption time by 28% with respect to encryption by each of the methods separately. Logarithmic analysis of size vs. encryption time reflects that the algorithm is scalable and computationally affordable. Our method is also able to reduce the chances of brute-force attacks since AES-256 is currently nearly impossible to break considering any available computational resources. Experimental results further confirmed that the proposed model is efficient and stands as a good candidate for secure data transfer and storage in the cloud. Future work will see integration of quantum-resistant cryptography into the proposed techniques to further strengthen data security.