“Cloud security” is a blanket term for the protocols, frameworks, and tools that protect cloud resources. This protection covers data, infrastructure, networks, applications, and end-user credentials. The need for properly implemented cloud security is greater than ever. Gartner predicts 70% of all digital workloads will be in a public cloud by 2025. However, the Cloud is not without risk. Sensitive data storage and interconnected systems make clouds an attractive target for bad actors.
In the age of rapid IT evolution and steep pressure to keep up, the benefits of cloud security outweigh the risks as long as security tools are correctly configured, monitored, and controlled.
There are four categories of cloud environments, each with its advantages and drawbacks.
Companies that use a public cloud utilize global third-party vendors that offer storage, networking, and other cloud services to the public. Public clouds, such as Azure, AWS, and so on, are often shared among millions of users.
Alternately, private clouds are owned and managed by a single organization. In this instance, the organization is entirely responsible for the defense of the private cloud (unlike public clouds, which use a shared responsibility model in which the vendor takes on much of the security responsibilities). Private clouds are more secure than public clouds but can be cost-prohibitive and resource-heavy to set up and maintain. Average users of private clouds include government agencies, financial services firms, and any organization with particular data sensitivity concerns.
An organization may combine public and private clouds to get the best-of-breed services for individual departments while keeping data transferable between the multiple clouds. This arrangement allows sophisticated users such as a DevOps team to maintain strict security without sacrificing scalability.
Some companies choose to use multiple public clouds. This solution is valuable for optimizing costs, maximizing availability, and managing compliance.
The four primary cloud service models include:
Cloud environments benefit from greater security than on-premises data centers. Gartner predicts that by 2025, user error will cause 99% of security breaches—rather than cloud vendor failure. However, that doesn’t mean that cloud security is risk-free. Organizations migrating to the cloud may face one or all the following challenges:
Organizations can overcome these challenges by enlisting a cloud security provider such as CBTS. The benefits of working with a cloud security partner include:
One of the core shifts that cloud computing brings is a movement away from CapEx to OpEx. No longer will your organization need to invest in dedicated hardware for an on-prem data center; that expense is now owned by the cloud service provider. A cloud security partner benefits your organization by saving you time and resources—correctly implementing security tools, eliminating unnecessary redundancies, and providing security experts.
Cloud security scales with demand. Companies can quickly add and deploy additional security services as needed, especially with the guidance of a security partner. Additionally, automation enables real-time scaling to ramp up or down during high-traffic periods.
Network edge security solutions such as SD-WAN, SSE, and SASE are critical when deploying hybrid work models. Choosing a suitable cloud security model for your organization can significantly increase adaptability and reduce the time it takes to bring new branches online while securing user identifications, access, and device traffic.
Customers demand access to services 24/7, whether online or via mobile apps. Cloud security provides the visibility necessary to monitor the threat landscape at all layers (app, platform, network, etc.) around the clock and prevent downtime.
By consolidating enterprise security into a centralized location, your team and security partner can easily monitor data, applications, user endpoints, and devices from a single-pane-of-glass perspective. These concentrated controls also simplify company-wide deployments of patches and the implementation of disaster recovery protocols.
Learn more: Build a successful patch management program with these best practices
Ransomware, distributed denial of service (DDoS), and social engineering attacks routinely target organizations in every sector. Your organization can stay ahead of the threat landscape by deploying automated extended threat detection (XDR) and other cloud-based antivirus tools.
While compliance is a routine concern in highly regulated industries such as healthcare or finance, data compliance rules from the GDPR (and other regulators) are expanding into other sectors, such as retail, to better protect consumer data. The CBTS security team stays on top of the latest compliance regulations. Our experts can help you adopt compliant governance frameworks such as zero trust.
Cloud systems make creating redundancies and backups faster and much more affordable. In the event of a service outage caused by a data breach or natural disaster, disaster recovery as a service allows organizations to get back up and running in a fraction of the time compared to traditional tape-based recovery systems.
Learn more: Data protection and managed backup for secure cloud organizations
By limiting user and device permissions, a segmented network prevents hackers from gaining unauthorized access, even if they manage a successful breach.
The responsibility for securing the Cloud is split between the user and the vendor for organizations to maximize the benefits of cloud security. The cloud vendor secures their infrastructure, networks, and servers, and the customer is responsible for securing their apps, data, and access.
One of the main goals of cloud security is achieving zero trust—every request, user ID, and access request must be verified and authenticated. To move toward this goal, CBTS guides our customers through the process of adopting the six pillars of cloud security:
The increasingly complex threat landscape drives home the need for robust cloud security. A single data breach could cost an organization millions of dollars in legal fees, ransoms, and lost customer loyalty. All it takes for one or more misconfigurations to slip by an overworked IT security manager to expose the sensitive data of thousands, perhaps millions of end users.
Your organization needs a security partner that is engaged and monitoring the current threat landscape. CBTS’ services stand apart from the competition.
Get in touch to enjoy the benefits of correctly configured cloud security.