Cloud Security – The challenges and an ideal step on your journey to a better and more secure cloud approach.

The cloud has helped fast-track the digital transformation of organisations amid a global pandemic. Its dependability and flexibility have enabled businesses to migrate expeditiously to remote work during challenging times. However, swift cloud adoptions could lead to mistakes, more commonly referred to as misconfigurations — Misconfigurations might seem straightforward and avoidable, but they are the most significant risks to cloud environments. In fact, 65 to 70 percent of all security challenges in the cloud arise from misconfigurations.

How do I view some of the challenges that cloud provides organisations?

I simply try and look at this in 3 steps, which whilst they don’t cover everything it’s a simple way of reviewing and building your strategy with regards to Cloud Security.

1. Visibility

Visibility of your cloud assets and connections helps you understand your cloud footprint, network architecture, inbound and outbound connections, what the services are and can you reduce your foot print within the cloud? However, you cannot secure what you can’t see, if you have multiple teams creating new workloads and developing them without security at the forefront, this provides risks to the organisation.

2. Security

You’ve got insights to your cloud platform(s), what is required to secure those assets? Whether that is Workload protection in the form of AV security, securing the connection with NGFW’s, protecting your websites in the form of a WAF, encrypting your important assets with encryption or even further locking down users and admin privileges into cloud estates, these are just a few ways to enhance the protection. What is key here is understanding the responsibility of who owns what and who protects what, between you as an organisation and the cloud provider.

3. Compliance

A huge factor to most organisations, underpinning your cloud strategy and aligning to the market leading compliancy regulations, no different to assets on-prem as it is to the cloud. GDPR, PCI DSS, Cyber Essentials – I would break this down into 2 stages. The first step is to produce a report on how well your posture meets these requirements and the second step would be to build upon the strategy and deployment of solutions / technologies that allow you to scale quickly and securely - All whilst ensuring you are complaint and your risk exposure is low.

In summary, we are seeing a lot of organisations migrate services / applications to the cloud, this makes working easier for organisations, improves flexibility and scalability but also provides an improved end user experience for employees. Therefore, having tools in place such as a CSPM (Cloud Security Posture Management) to help organisations embark on the above, or review existing architecture within the cloud, allows organisations to put security at the forefront of future developments as well as improving on potential exposure to risk now.

How can Bytes Help?

Bytes can assist in multiple ways, including:

• Workshops: our security team run a multitude of these to cover all core areas of security. If a you have a cloud project on the horizon that you would value independent advice on, get in touch or find out more about our Cloud Security Jumpstart Here.
• Specialist resources: we have an ever-growing security team, dedicated to helping you overcome the latest security challenges
• Technology: hand-picked, best-of-breed technologies with a proven track record covering all core areas of security

If you would like to find out more about any of the above or speak to us about the world of CSPM, the tools available and how easy it is to get set up and deploy, please reach out to [email protected] or give us a call on ​​​​​01372 418500.

Marc Simmonds

Security Business Manager

Bytes