With more and more businesses jumping on the cloud bandwagon, business leaders must think about ways they can use to keep their enterprises safe during the transition from legacy systems to the cloud. They will have to formulate a new strategy and policies because their current policies are made for traditional hardware.
Many organizations are adopting cloud-based deployment models, which come with their risks. In addition to this, the journey to the cloud might vary from company to company. If a company has migrated to the cloud successfully without any hassle does not mean that your business can do the same. You might come across challenges along the way that you need to overcome to reap the real benefits of cloud computing.
According to cloud adoption statistics, hybrid cloud adoption is 58%. In fact, 84% of cloud adopting enterprises have a multi-cloud strategy, which clearly shows their inclination towards using more than one public and private cloud. With most cloud adopters using a hybrid or multi-cloud approach, enterprises need to understand the key elements involved in multi-cloud security otherwise, they will be at a much higher risk of cyber-attacks and data breaches.
In this article, Anti-Dos will shed light on five important pillars of multi-cloud security that can keep your cloud infrastructure safe.
1. Visibility
One of the main tenets of multi-cloud security is visibility. Your IT team should have clear visibility into which cloud applications and services are being used by employees. Moreover, they should also know the purpose behind the use of those services and applications.
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Things start to get out of control when employees start creating new accounts and start using cloud services and applications without knowledge of their IT department. This can increase the risk and makes your enterprise more vulnerable to unwanted intrusions. This also opens doors for insider threats as well as external threats and data theft.
Dr Larry Ponemon, Chairman of Ponemon Institute said, “Insider threats are not viewed as seriously as external threats, like a cyberattack. Insider threats cost businesses much more than external threats.”
The best way to prevent this is to use a cloud discovery application. Review and flag any discrepancy immediately and do not allow suspicious cloud applications and services to run. Running cloud service discovery scans will tell you which applications and services and running.
2. Integration
Cloud deployment comes in many different shapes and sizes. Depending on which flavour of cloud deployment you have chosen, you should choose your security strategy and integration strategy accordingly. Some businesses take a platform-based approach where they put their workload in a container while other use third-party cloud services providers such as Amazon Web Services or IBM Cloud. Some businesses use the software as a service model to deliver applications.
Irrespective of which path of cloud adoption you choose, it is important to ensure security and compliance. Use security intelligence and analytics tools to collect data about everything from endpoints to users, applications to networks. This makes it easy for businesses to apply context to that data and get a clear picture of what is going on. Instead of sending multiple alerts for a different system, you can integrate all of them and treat them as a single incident. This reduces the burden off the shoulders of your security team but can delay the response.
3. Threat Mitigation
Identifying or detecting threats is one thing and mitigating those threats is another. To mitigate threats, your cloud security program should take advantage of user behavior analysis and DNS DDoS protection. Amazingly, most cloud threats emerge from inside your organization and account for 60% of all data breaches. Yes, you read that right, insider threats are more prevalent than external attacks and data breaches.
Differentiating between user actions is critical because user actions can either be intentional or unintentional. This is where active user behavior analysis comes in handy. In addition to securing users, IT leaders should also take steps to protect their machine, admin, and service accounts. It is important for businesses to know who privileges users and who is accessing these accounts. All this can boost your ability to safeguard your assets and users at the same time.
4. Faster Response
Doctors find cures for a disease after diagnosing the disease. Similarly, security professionals respond to incidents after identifying the threat by AVG Secure VPN. The speed and accuracy of incident response is critical. In order to succeed at threat mitigation, you will have to combine all the data you have with a well-executed plan. Create a unified response plan that encompasses all the clouds, instead of creating separate ones for each cloud. Follow industry standards and playbook but do not be afraid to adapt according to the changing threat dynamics. CIOs should not only ensure that they comply with industry standards but prove and report their adherence to these standards.
5. Artificial Intelligence
The complexity of these attacks is also increasing. Combine that with the talent shortfall in the cybersecurity industry and you can easily see most businesses are struggling to cope with the latest threats. This leads to long incident dwell times, alert overload, and an increasing number of unaddressed threats which can pose a big threat to the security of your organization.
By harnessing the power of artificial intelligence, enterprises can cut through the noise and focus on major issues such as incidents or events, impact, and response. What makes artificial intelligence so effective is its ability to find patterns in huge data sets. Artificial intelligence can also help businesses in protecting their sensitive data.
According to Rajarshi Gupta, Head of AI at Avast, “In the coming year, we will see practical applications of AI-based algorithms, including differential privacy, a system in which a description of patterns in a dataset is shared while withholding information about individuals.” Differential privacy will help companies boost their revenues by leveraging big data insights too without exposing private data.
Businesses must, however, ensure that the cloud service provider has the appropriate security measures for their cloud architecture.
How do you secure your hybrid cloud infrastructure? Let us know in the comments section below.