Cloud security is a collection of programs and technologies designed to address external and internal threats to enterprise security. Enterprises need cloud security as they implement their digital transformation strategies and integrate cloud-based tools and services into their infrastructure.
The terms “digital transformation” and “cloud migration” have been frequently used in enterprise scenarios in recent years. Although the two may represent different concepts for different enterprises, what they have in common is the need for change.
As businesses embrace these concepts and set out to optimize their operational approaches. New challenges arise when balancing productivity levels and safety. While an increasing number of modern technologies can help businesses drive capabilities beyond the confines of on-premises infrastructure. The transition to a cloud-dominated environment without security can have detrimental effects.
Achieving the right balance requires understanding how businesses today benefit from the use of interconnected cloud technologies. While deploying best practices in cloud security.
What is cloud computing?
“Cloud”, or more specifically, “cloud computing”, refers to the process of breaking away from the confines of local hardware and accessing resources, software, and databases over the Internet. Using this technology, businesses are able to offload some or most of their infrastructure management to third-party hosting providers to flexibly scale operations.
The most common cloud computing services that are widely adopted include:
IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service): A hybrid approach that enables organizations to manage certain data and applications on-premises. While relying on cloud providers to manage the server, hardware, networking, virtualization, and storage needs.
PaaS (Platform as a Service): Helps enterprises simplify application development and delivery by providing a customized application framework to automatically manage operating systems, software updates, storage, and support infrastructure in the cloud.
SaaS (Software as a Service): Cloud-based software that is hosted online and often offered on a subscription basis. Third-party providers manage all potential technical issues such as data, middleware, servers and storage, minimizing IT resource expenditure and simplifying maintenance and support functions.
Why is cloud security important?
Businesses today have begun to increasingly transition to cloud-based environments and IaaS, Paas, or SaaS computing models. Due to the dynamic nature of infrastructure management, especially when it comes to scaling applications and services, businesses can face some challenges in providing adequate resources for their departments. With these “as-a-service” models, businesses can offload many time-consuming IT-related tasks.
As businesses continue to migrate to the cloud, it is critical to understand security requirements to keep data safe. While a third-party cloud provider can handle the management of this infrastructure, responsibility for data asset security and accountability does not necessarily shift with it.
By default, most cloud providers follow best security practices and take proactive steps to protect the integrity of their servers. However, enterprises also need to make their own considerations when protecting data, applications and workloads running in the cloud.
As the digital landscape continues to evolve, so do the technologies exploited by security threats. These threats are specifically targeting cloud computing providers due to a lack of overall visibility by enterprises over data access and movement. Without proactive steps to improve cloud security, businesses can face significant governance and compliance risks when managing customer information, no matter where it is stored.
Regardless of the size of your business, cloud security is an important topic of discussion. Cloud infrastructure supports nearly all aspects of modern computing in all industries and across multiple vertical segments.
However, successful cloud adoption depends on implementing adequate countermeasures to defend against today’s cyberattacks. Whether your business operates in a public, private or hybrid cloud environment, cloud security solutions and best practices are a must for business continuity.
What are the cloud security challenges?
Lack of visibility
Because many cloud services are accessed by third parties outside the corporate network, it is often not easy to understand how data is being accessed and by whom.
Multi-tenancy
Public clouds run multiple customer infrastructures in the same environment, so when malicious attackers attack other businesses, there is the potential to compromise your hosting services.
Access Management and Shadow IT
While an enterprise may be able to successfully manage and restrict access points in on-premises systems, it can be difficult to manage these same levels of restriction in a cloud environment. This is dangerous if businesses don’t deploy bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies and allow unfiltered access to cloud services from any device or geographic location.
Compliance
Regulatory compliance management is often a source of confusion for businesses using public or hybrid cloud deployments. Overall accountability for data privacy and security remains with the enterprise itself, and heavy reliance on third-party solutions to manage this component can lead to costly compliance issues.
Misconfigured
Misconfigured assets accounted for 86% of breaches recorded in 2019. And making inadvertent insider threats a serious problem in cloud computing environments. Misconfigurations can include keeping default administrative passwords in place, or not creating appropriate privacy settings.
What types of cloud security solutions are available?
Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Identity and Access Management (IAM) tools and services enable enterprises to deploy policy-driven enforcement protocols for all users attempting to access both on-premises and cloud-based services. The core function of IAM is to create digital identities for all users so that they can be actively monitored and restricted as needed during all data interactions
Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) services provide a range of tools and services designed to keep regulated cloud data safe. DLP solutions use a combination of remediation alerts, and data encryption. And other preventive measures to protect all stored data, whether at rest or in motion.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
SIEM provides a comprehensive security orchestration solution that automates threat detection, monitoring, and response in cloud-based environments. SIEMs use artificial intelligence (AI)-driven technologies to link log data across multiple platforms. And digital assets, enabling IT teams to successfully apply cybersecurity protocols while quickly responding to any potential threats.
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
Regardless of the precautions businesses implement for their on-premises and cloud-based infrastructure, data breaches and disruptive outages are still possible. Businesses must be able to react quickly to newly discovered vulnerabilities or major system outages as quickly as possible. Disaster recovery solutions are an essential element of cloud security. Providing businesses with the tools, services, and protocols they need to expedite the recovery of lost data and normal business operations.
How should you go about securing your cloud?
Approaches to approaching cloud security are different for every business and may depend on several variables. However, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed a list of best practices that can be followed to establish a secure and sustainable cloud computing framework.
NIST created the necessary steps for each business to self-assess its security readiness and apply adequate preventive and recovery security measures to its systems. These principles are based on the five pillars of NIST’s Cybersecurity Framework: Identity, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover.
Another emerging technology in the cloud security space. What supports the implementation of the NIST cybersecurity framework is cloud security posture management (CSPM). CSPM solutions are designed to address a common pitfall in many cloud environments, namely misconfiguration.
A misconfigured cloud infrastructure by an enterprise or even a cloud provider can lead to several vulnerabilities. That can significantly increase an enterprise’s attack surface. CSPM addresses these issues by helping to organize and deploy the core components of cloud security. These include identity and access management (IAM), regulatory compliance management, traffic monitoring, threat response, risk mitigation, and digital asset management.