The operation to secure cloud architectures has become IT strategy’s cornerstone because companies develop increasingly complicated IT infrastructures comprising of hybrid, private, and public cloud instances. Several fundamentals of cloud data security remain unmodified, but how users can detect them in the public cloud is altogether different. With latest technologies, online-related and hybrid infrastructures, attacks that aim at public clouds (like IaaS or PaaS platforms) demand for a different set of actions and insight operations. Comparing with the traditional data centers, cloud storage architectures work in a different manner. For example – In a cloud computing environment, an executable come and go quickly, network addresses are recycled apparently at random, and even the basic way of traffic flows get modified. A successful use of cloud architectures to mitigate data security complexity demands for a shift away from network-based security, legacy, to the purpose-built cloud method.
Try to Understand the Nature of Cloud Workloads
Spreading the work burden on cloud can rapidly include complex set of microservices and severless operations in fluid infrastructures. This can be changed in every few seconds or minutes, resulting in a constant change in security environment. Following are some common data security challenges that are present in the cloud:
- Ephemeral Workloads – It is common to recycle the resources like IP addresses, drives, firewalls, data, and other operational elements, to optimize the use of online platform resources. These assets and operations are invariably destroyed and recreated in a dynamic cloud platform, and the approach with which they are delivered to clients is constantly getting updated. Sometimes these work operations come and then, go in seconds.
- Online Microservices – Applications are often separated into several discrete functions in an online platform. The online microservices provide a more effective way to utilize resources and allow greater run-time flexibility, but they also use security more complex. This means that cloud users have to first manage the access control and permissions for an app and then, have to set it for each microservice, which makes up an online application.
- Web Containers – It is possible to easily deploy apps, operations, and microservices in a strong controlled containerized platform with the use a container. Web containers can define a complete new complexity level and potential vulnerability. All containers in a platform share a common OS named as Kernel, which is settled by a poorly configured container, resulting in compromising of all other containers in that particular platform. Also, it is not all time simple to analyze and view what is happening in between the containers. Use of several containers at one time and place increases the chances of data breach or threat occurrence due to human errors.
- The DevOps Process – A new program is regularly being deployed in a cloud architecture. This could happen on daily or hours basis, and in actual, DevOps deployments are often a step ahead of security. Every recently created deployed service or function indicates a growth in the threat surface.
Good Habits to Secure Cloud Architectures
Ever-changing online platform isn’t properly served by traditional security products. This is so because these products were never designed for fluid or high access environments like cloud storage. Constant real-time anomaly detection and behavioral analysis system is needed, which has the ability to monitor all operations performed on the cloud architecture to mitigate data security complexity, correlate activity among several containers, apps, and users, and record the activities for analysis after containers and other historical workloads that have been recycled. This sort of monitoring system should have the trick to trigger automatic warning alerts. Behavioral analytics make it possible to execute non-standards based event detection and analysis in a platform, which is adapting for serving regularly changing operational requirements. Following highlighted are the benefits to using this sort of system for cloud architectures security :
- Auditing of continuous, real-time configuration, and compliance across the cloud storage
- Continuous monitoring of access and configuration activities across APIs and all types of accounts in a business
- Continuous monitoring of workload and deep container activities is abstracted from the network. A public online platform offers limited data visibility feature into network activity, therefore, this demands for agents on web containers who monitor orchestrations products, access control, and file integrity.
Use CloudCodes to Avoid All Security Complexities
Cloud architectures security demands for several preventive measures to overcome cloud computing security challenges. Instead of implementing solutions one after the another, it is better to adopt a comprehensive and an automated CASB solution. It will reduce all the security complexities faced by organizations during the protection of online data, and allow users to work with a free mind. One can pick CloudCodes CASB product to achieve this benefit and automate cloud security to mitigate data security complexity for cloud architectures. This solution creates a strong virtual boundary, restricting intruders from performing their intended task.