5 Best Ways to Improve Cloud Security
More and more companies start using cloud computing and its security remains one of the most relevant topics. It’s pretty obvious why cloud security is important but understanding how to enhance it – a more complicated task. 5 steps enlisted in this article can help organizations to improve their cloud security posture management.
1. Define the responsibilities
It’s recommended to begin with clarifying responsibilities within your cloud architecture. In cloud computing, security responsibilities are divided between the organization and the cloud service provider – it’s called a Shared Responsibility Model. The vital step is to identify who is responsible for what exactly.
It’s equally important to allocate internal responsibilities. Back in the day, the security team was one and only in charge of providing cloud security. Nowadays security responsibilities are shared throughout the company where each department takes into account the possible risks and examines the policies of the cloud services they’re using.
Every organization that once chose cloud infrastructure, despite its size, should have a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) — a team in charge of supporting and developing the organization’s cloud strategy.
This team handles governing the IT infrastructure and adoption of best practices across a range of disciplines like financial management, cloud security, and compliance. You can read more about CCoE in our previous article The Main Points to Consider When Measuring the Cloud.
2. Maintain internal communication
After defining responsibilities, it’s better to keep in contact with cloud operations and security teams, as well as the other organization’s departments. Why is communication important in the workplace?
The quicker a company is notified of security threats, the quicker some actions to eliminate the problem can be taken. As a rule, CCoE is in charge of providing the expeditious delivery of the information to the right department, or person.
In addition to that, it’s beneficial to have meetings with the company members on a regular basis, where possible ways of improving the work of the organization can be discussed: strategies, pain points, solutions, crucial operational updates. Communicating openly brings clarity in some internal departments’ processes and positively affects the company’s overall productivity.
3. Gain higher visibility
Visibility of resources utilization across the entire cloud environment is one of the main drivers to improve cloud security posture management. It’s obvious that you can’t protect things that you can’t see.
Despite the fact that providers offer native cloud monitoring tools to track the number of resources used and their costs, the information given is still not sufficient enough. Besides, the monitoring process is more complex when we talk about multi-cloud or hybrid cloud environments.
Trustworthy cloud management platforms provide a complete picture of the cloud environment, regardless of its type. For instance, Binadox users get recommendations on several kinds of security misconfigurations to decide what measures should be taken.
4. Detect cloud security vulnerabilities
The majority of cloud security issues occur due to the end-users negligence: some share the access through untrustworthy applications, while others forget to log out of the account when using not a personal computer.
The manual detection of those issues requires a significant amount of time and money, as the specialists involved in completing this daunting task should be paid. Frankly speaking, nowadays manual detection is no longer an option for organizations that want to be aware of all the vulnerabilities in their cloud environment, as soon as they occur.
Even though there are many security issues detection tools in the cloud, they cannot provide users with all the required information. These tools can identify the non-compliant resource type but not the level of risk, not even mentioning giving the recommendations for the next steps.
Cloud management platforms like Binadox not only detect occurring problems but also suggest possible solutions. Advice on security vulnerabilities can be sent to an organization’s communication channels like Email, Slack, or Zendesk.
5. Solve cloud security issues
After you detected a cloud security issue, you need to find a solution as soon as possible. “Time is money” – this phrase is suitable here better than ever. Cyber Attackers are becoming more and more sophisticated and can target cloud misconfiguration vulnerabilities in the blink of an eye. This is a reason for moving to automated cloud remediation.
Actions taken in order to provide cloud security can be of 2 main types: fully automated ones and those that need human involvement. The companies usually choose the policies they want to automate, and at which level they should be automated. The CCoE team also can decide in what cases to automate policies and what cases need to be acted upon manually.
Next steps
In terms of cloud security, the ground rule is “protect, detect and respond”.
To keep your cloud architecture secure, preventive measures such as regular security checks should be taken. It helps to detect the potential security issues in the early stages, before the moment when it got too far and there is nothing left to save.
The process of detecting potential threats can be arranged by means of deploying various cloud management platforms like Binadox.
Responding to those threats is the last but not the least step. The solutions to security issues depend on the type of the problem, whether it’s network security, data encryption, or authorization issues.
Companies can facilitate the establishment of the 3 above-mentioned steps by deploying third-party tools like Binadox. It can save employees time and energy that can be used in a more productive and profitable way. Moreover, all people make mistakes and no one is fully protected here. So, let trustworthy platforms like Binadox do their job.
Stop worrying about cloud security. Sign up for a free Binadox trial, start utilizing its features and sleep tight.