What is Cloud Security Control?
Cloud service vendors provide a myriad of data security services as well as cloud security tools that help in securer customer workload, but admins have to implement the much-needed defense. Now, it simply does not matter which type of security defense your cloud service provider is having if the customers themselves do not protect their users, apps, and networks. Most people to date are not having a complete understanding of the process of configuring the cloud environment. So, firms cannot treat the public cloud as some old place for storing of critical information, but they need to inculcate some stringent cloud security controls into their systems for ensuring the safety of their cloud run environment, apps as well as data to keep them all protected from any sort of unauthorized access.
Knowledge About What You Are Responsible For
All of the cloud services are not exactly the same; they do differ, and the levels of responsibilities in each variable. Software-as-a-service or SaaS providers ensure the protection of their applications. Also, they make sure that the data is transferred securely and stored safely, but that might not be the typical case for cloud infrastructures. CASB solutions can be used by firms for having cloud security controls.
Top Cloud Security Controls That You Should be Using Today
1. Controlling Who Has The Access
It has been discovered that around 31% of the databases in public clouds are all open to the World Wide Web or the Internet. Also, the facts show that around 93% of resources in public clouds don’t restrict the outbound traffic. 9% of the cloud workload, which was neither the load balancers, nor the bastion hosts, accepts traffic from any of the IP addresses on any ports, and this is really a very bad idea indeed. Majorly, the cloud service providers tend to offer IAM or identity & access control solutions; so you must use them for better cloud security controls; as you would then know who is having access to which data and at what time. While creating these IAM policies, you must grant lesser privileges needed as well as grant additional permissions temporarily only when they are needed.
2. Securing Credentials
Creating unique keys for every external service is much needed. Also, you must restrict the data access by following the principles of giving out the least privileges. Ensure that the keys are not having broad permissions, because when they are in any wrong malicious hands, they could be used for accessing sensitive data as well as resources. You must also try creating IAM roles for assigning some of the specific privileges, like making the API calls, etc. Also, ensure to rotate keys on a regular basis. It is also discovered that around 63% of these access keys aren’t rotated in as long as ninety days even; which is a good enough reason for giving the hackers a chance to intercept these compromised keys and peep into these cloud environments maliciously as privileged users, posing serious risks.
3. Security Hygiene Also Matters
Multi-factor authentication or MFA helps in providing the much-needed additional cloud security layer, better than the username & password method; thus making it all the more difficult for the hackers to break into the systems. MFA must be enabled for restricting access to any dashboard, management console, as well as any privileged user account. It is discovered that around 58% of the root accounts are not having an MFA feature as enabled, and another such statistic reveals that around 62% of firms are having at least 1 user who has not enabled MFA. CASB solutions have MFA feature enabled, which can help the enterprises have the required cloud security controls.
4. Do Not Allow Mistakes To Lead To Breaches
Cloud data breach is not also caused by hackers from outside the system; but as per a shocking relevance, confidential company data can also be open for leakage by simple human errors of staff, etc. Mistakes like the events of forgetting to turn on some service or not verifying something that was ought to be done etc. can leave the data doors open for hackers to attack and break into the systems. Firms must assess their cloud security on a regular basis and also of their partners, vendors, and suppliers too. At times, mistakes by 3rd party vendors can become the cause of a firm’s big headache. Thus, the cloud security model as a shared responsibility exists for some valid and good enough reason; which says that both the cloud providers along with the organizations must together fight this battle. CASB solutions can be used to avoid any such breaches and have better cloud security control.