Bytes Blog: Fortifying the Skies: Secure Multi-Cloud Networking

Monday 24th February 2025

Giuseppe Damiano

Pre-Sales Cyber Security Consultant

Author

Daniela Miccardi

Cyber Security Marketing Manager

Editor

Securing Multi-Cloud Networking

Understand the benefits and challenges of implementing consistent security to multiple cloud environments.

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Introduction

Organisations today are increasingly adopting strategies which involve multiple cloud service providers, or CSPs, in order to leverage the combination of unique advantages offered by the corresponding platforms. However, with these advantages also come significant challenges around securing a potentially more complex infrastructure, and this article aims to provide information on how best to address them.

Key Drivers of Multi-Cloud Adoption

Enhanced Flexibility and Avoidance of Vendor Lock-In

One of the primary motivations to adopt a multi-cloud strategy is flexibility. Having more than one cloud provider at their disposal, enables organisations to select services from the one that best meet their specific needs. This approach not only avoids dependency on a single vendor but in some cases also allows businesses to negotiate better terms and service agreements with CSPs.

Optimised Performance and Cost Efficiency

By distributing workloads across multiple cloud environments, organizations can optimise performance and reduce costs. Different CSPs offer varied pricing models and performance capabilities, enabling businesses to choose the most cost-effective and efficient solution for their requirements. This optimisation can result in significant savings and improved operational efficiency.

Improved Resilience and Disaster Recovery

Multi-cloud environments can enhance an organisation’s resilience and disaster recovery capabilities. By leveraging multiple CSPs, redundancy and failover mechanisms can be built to leverage a combination of different environments, minimising the risk of downtime and data loss. While this is also true when utilising multiple availability zone within a single CSP, the combination of multiple CSPs certainly contribute to increasing the overall level of cyber resilience.

Access to Best-of-Breed Solutions

A multi-cloud strategy allows organisations to access the best-of-breed solutions available in the market. Different CSPs excel in various different domains, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, data analytics, and more. By utilising the strengths of multiple providers, businesses can stay at the forefront of technological advancements and maintain a competitive edge.

Multi-Cloud Security Challenges

Visibility and Control

Multi-cloud environments are inherently complex with diverse architectures and featuring different components, policies, and security measures. Gaining comprehensive visibility and control over data and applications spread across multiple cloud environments can be a significant challenge. Without a unified view, it becomes difficult to identify and manage security threats effectively, and the lack of comprehensive visibility can lead to issues such as unpatched vulnerabilities or undetected breaches.

Inconsistent Security Policies

Each cloud provider has its own set of security policies and controls. Managing these individually for each cloud platform can result in inconsistencies and cyber security risks. Ensuring the uniform application of security and compliance policies across different environments is often a complex and time consuming task.

Data Security and Privacy

Protecting sensitive data is paramount for all organisations. The presence of distributed data across different cloud environments increases the risk of unauthorised access, privacy violations and data breaches. Implementing robust encryption, access controls, and data governance policies is essential to safeguard the integrity and confidentiality of sensitive data. Being able to do so consistently across multiple different cloud environments can be challenging.

Integration and Interoperability

Ensuring seamless integration and interoperability between different cloud platforms is key to unlock the many benefits that each platform brings and to ensure the resulting multi-cloud environment is as secure as it can be. Establishing standardised protocols and frameworks is necessary to achieve cohesive integration.

Securing Multi-Cloud Networking Effectively

As the consumption of multiple cloud services grow, security solutions constantly to address this expanding trend. What used to be CSPM has now evolved into CNAPP, CWP, CDR and even DSPM.

Today, the key to securing multi-cloud environments effectively is to identify a solution capable of supporting all the required platforms and delivering unified and comprehensive security across the whole cloud estate.

The Cisco Cloud Protection Suite provides a modern security approach to hybrid, multi-cloud strategies by protecting apps and data, gain pervasive visibility, and simplify security operations across all cloud environments.

The solution simplifies multi-cloud security operations thanks to its ability to manage and deploy security controls across clouds from one interface and to its built-in automation and orchestration aimed at reducing manual processes and the corresponding potential misconfigurations.

The Cisco Cloud Protection Suite enables organisations to:

Defend their entire cloud infrastructure

By delivering multidirectional protection across clouds to stop inbound attacks, data exfiltration, and lateral movement.

Secure all cloud workloads

By stopping threats from spreading thanks to zero-trust micro-segmentation.

Protect applications

By providing visibility and protection across the application lifecycle to reduce risks and to meet compliance.

Manage the attack surface

By understanding the various cloud environments, monitoring them for policy violations and misconfigurations, accelerating remediation and reducing risk with data-driven vulnerability prioritisation.

Conclusion

Securing multi-cloud networking is a challenge that requires a holistic approach. By understanding the key drivers behind multi-cloud adoption and addressing the associated security challenges with robust solutions, businesses can create secure and resilient cloud environments and - as a result - harness the benefits of distributed data and applications that multi-cloud environments unlock.

As the cloud landscape continues to evolve, staying ahead of emerging threats and continuously enhancing security practices will be paramount to sustaining business success and resilience.

Glossary

CSP = Cloud Service Provider
CSPM = Cloud Security Posture Management
CNAPP = Cloud Native Application Protection Platform
CWP = Cloud Workload Protection
CDR = Cloud Detection and Response
DSPM = Data Security Posture Management
API = Application Programming Interface

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