ALSO KNOWN AS CLOUD COMPUTING SECURITY
CLOUD SECURITY
Importance of Cloud Security
Security threats that have become more advanced explicitly target cloud computing providers due to an organization’s overall lack of visibility in data access and movement. Cloud security should be an important topic of discussion regardless of the size of the enterprise to prevent organizations from facing significant governance and compliance risks when managing client information, regardless of where it is stored.
Cloud security also offers many benefits such as centralized security, reduced costs since it delivers proactive security features that offer protection 24/7 with little or no human intervention, reduced administration—all security administration happens in one place and is fully managed on your behalf, and reliability—with the right cloud security measures in place, users can safely access data and applications within the cloud no matter where they are or what device they are using.
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Users can access cloud services without having to manage it directly through third parties. This results in less control for the provider over the resources.
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Public cloud environments can cater to different client infrastructures concurrently. In a case where one of the infrastructure is being targeted by attackers, other infrastructures might get involved as a collateral damage.
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Managing and restricting access points can be challenging in a cloud environment. This might impose higher security risk especially for organizations that allow full access to its services from any device.
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Organizations need to comply with regulations. However, it is often confusing for some that use public or hybrid cloud deployment. Responsibility for data privacy and security still depends on the organization and using third-party solutions for this can be costly.
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Misconfigured assets, like using default administrative passwords, can lead to inadvertent data breach. In 2019, 86% of the breached records was caused by misconfiguration, making it one of the challenges in cloud environments.
Available Cloud Security Solutions
Identity and access management (IAM)
Tools and services that use IAM provide policy-driven enforcement protocols. Its main feature is the user’s creation of digital identities, which is used for monitoring and restricting purposes during data interactions.
Data loss prevention (DLP)
DLP offers tools and services to secure regulated cloud data. To protect all stored data, it utilizes techniques like data encryption and remediation alerts.
Security information and event management (SIEM)
Using artificial intelligence, SIEM automates monitoring, detection, and response in various threats in cloud-based environments.
Business continuity and disaster recovery
Even when applying preventive measures, data breach and other outages can still occur in a cloud-based infrastructure. An organization should be able to act on it as soon as possible using appropriate tools, solutions, and protocols to ensure the retrieval of the lost data.
Best Practices for Cloud Security
Enterprises that are considering a particular cloud vendor should review its policies about shared security responsibilities and understand who is handling the various aspects of cloud security to avoid miscommunication and mishandling.
Organizations should ask their public cloud vendors detailed questions about the security measures and processes they have in place.
Organizations may want to look for an identity and access management (IAM) solution that works in hybrid environments that include private data centers as well as cloud deployments which can simplify authentication for end users and make it easier for security staff to ensure that they are enforcing consistent policies across all IT environments.
To prevent hackers from getting their hands on access credentials for cloud computing tools, organizations should train all workers on how to spot cybersecurity threats and how to respond to them. Organizations also need to invest in specialized training for their security staff. The threat landscape shifts on a daily basis, and IT security professionals can only keep up if they are constantly learning about the newest threats and potential countermeasures.
All organizations should have written guidelines that specify who can use cloud services, how they can use them, and which data can be stored in the cloud. They also need to lay out the specific security technologies that employees must use to protect data and applications in the cloud.
Using a cloud service intensifies the need for strong endpoint security. Endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools and/or endpoint protection platform (EPP) can help in this area. EDR and EPP solutions combine traditional endpoint security capabilities with continuous monitoring and automated response.
Organizations should encrypt any data in a public cloud storage device and should also ensure that data is encrypted during transit—when it may be most vulnerable to attacks.
Intrusion prevention and detection systems (IDPS) monitor, analyze, and respond to network traffic across both on-premises and public cloud environments. Without IDPS, it’s nearly impossible to analyze network traffic for the telltale signs of a sophisticated attack.
Before establishing a new cloud computing service, organizations should review their particular compliance requirements and make sure that their service provider will meet their data security needs.
Cloud access security brokers (CASBs) are tools purpose-built to enforce cloud security policies. Experts say that a CASB solution may make the most sense for organizations that use multiple cloud computing services from several different vendors. These solutions can also monitor for unauthorized apps and access too.
Experts say all enterprises should run penetration testing to determine whether existing cloud security efforts are sufficient to protect data and applications. Organizations should conduct regular security audits that include an analysis of all security vendors’ capabilities. This should confirm that they are meeting the agreed upon security terms.
Organizations should enable logging features for their cloud solutions. Logging helps system administrators keep track of which users are making changes to the environment—something that would be nearly impossible to do manually. Logging also helps identify individual users who may have more access than they actually need to do their jobs, so administrators can adjust those permissions to the bare minimum.