The ripping benefits of cloud computing have been widely touted – business agility, scalability, efficiencies and cost savings among the top. Fortunately, more and more companies are seen migrating and building mission-critical Java applications specifically for cloud environments showing no signs of slowing down. At the same time, such technology has exposed us to threats and risks previously unheard of.
I personally believe that cloud security is one of those things that everyone prefers having, but cannot figure out how to deal with it. Businesses often migrate themselves to the cloud to access its benefits but, fail to understand the importance of the security and risk management implications of doing so. With the worldwide adoption of these new tech; the breadth and depth of the attack surface seem to have expanded to a great extent. Functions like deploying and managing security become a tricky task like never before – all thanks to orchestrating policy controls, to transparent visibility, to tracking and reporting on security postures, standards, and regulatory compliance.
Major Security Concerns of Cloud Service Consumers
Like I said before, most of the people wary when it comes to using cloud security services, because of several concerns regarding service outages, data loss, privacy issues, hacker compromising their access accounts, and compliance with legislation. If you are IT savvy, I am sure you are more likely to have skills and resources to monitor the service level of their service provider, assess the service provider’s security compliance, or implement their own additional security safeguards to protect their data. Whereas a non-techie, on the other hand, might find it difficult when it comes to choosing a reliable cloud service provider and remain hesitant on whether their data has sufficient protection when using a cloud service.
Is there something to be aware of?
Data being processed in a cloud service may contain valuable, sensitive and personal information. Knowing all the measures isn’t just enough; both responsible parties of businesses and individuals, are advised to have an in-depth understanding of the issues and concerns for protecting their data in the cloud environment. Further below I would like to mention a few pointers or a checklist that must be taken into account when implementing a multi-cloud strategy:
- Directory service – In case, if you are using identity and access management, it is very crucial to keep identities on a directory. However, you can think of using Microsoft’s Active Directory which works just fine or any LDAP-compliant directory. Just keep this in mind, you need to deal with security at the directory level as well, so just make sure that the directory itself does not become a vulnerability.
- Map all your processes – Migration to cloud environments does not have to happen overnight. Much like any other security initiative; one needs to plan the entire process by mapping out everything from all the advantages to challenges, processes, and information. It is very important for you to understand the fact that moving platforms or data to the cloud is a long-term decision and has to be taken with care. More importantly, cloud migration will directly impact your security policies and practices, which will need to be reviewed – including the fact that your team will need to more training on how to properly use the cloud and how it relates to your updated security policies and procedures. Mapping all such processes, monitoring all activity, knowing where your information will be stored, reviewing security policies are certain challenges you may happen to face.
- Security Ops. – One of the most overlooked aspects is security operations aka Ability to proactively monitor the security systems and subsystems are certain aspects included in secops. By doing this, you can ensure that they are doing their jobs appropriately and that the security services are updated with the latest information especially the one which is required to keep your system safe
- Compliance management- Another interesting yet overlooked feature is compliance management. This is the point where you get to deal with those pesky rules and regulations that affect security. Whether you choose GDPR-compliant or HIPAA-compliant, this is the point where you have a console at hand; something that alerts you to things that may be out of compliance. Hence, you can easily take corrective action.
- Transparency and Centralization – Can you come up with the ultimate goal? It’s the ability to seamlessly manage security across your traditional network environments as well as all private and public cloud assets. Instead, many organizations are forced to view their security portfolio through different and isolated consoles, which leads to degraded situational awareness through visibility gaps, perceptual ambiguities, and the wasted motion involved in hand-correlating information between tool A and solution B.
So that’s all for now! Keep watching the space to get more information regarding the same.
Author Bio: Charles Richard is a progressive leader who can identify, initiate, and deliver the analysis that can leverage the data and information needed to generate increased business value. Charles has 8 years of Business Analyst Experience, all with Tatvasoft.co.uk. And a part-time enthusiast writer who loves to write that matters and believes that writing is the best media to express what you want to share with the rest of the world. Prior to joining TatvaSoft, he was a programmer for about 3 years. He holds MBA and Computer Science degree. You can found him on Twitter.
Charles Richard is a guest blogger, all opinions are his own.
