Digital business means more of your operations, more of your storage, and more of your interaction now happens in the cloud. Fully housed online, rather than running locally on your own computer, these needs are still being met, but you have left with more computing power and more local storage thanks to these things migrating online.
But, this migration does come with its own set of limitations and challenges. Namely, because cloud servers are not a part of your own network, they require specific protocols and security measures in place to ensure that someone else doesn’t gain remote access to your cloud storage, or your cloud operations. Cloud security must-haves also mean more than one thing — so read on and learn what you must have if you’re going to protect your business in the cloud.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
Much like an endpoint security system is used to identify and remediate threats and potential risks on your local endpoint, cloud security must-haves posture management (CSPM for short) is a way to protect the cloud apps you use by identifying and responding to similar risks across various virtual infrastructures. It’s designed to do so in response to the fact that the cloud and the apps native to the cloud have no defined perimeter as a local network would, and that cloud computing often consists of various decentralized operations. To protect something so ethereal and far-reaching, it only makes sense to use a tool made to meet these needs — so a CSPM is crucial for those with various important virtual connections.
Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP)
When you’re processing workloads in the cloud, it’s generally through multiple virtual machines, rather than just one: whether it’s the initial order-taking, the storage of information, or the business’s actual work required for the process, some steps require different platforms, and they’re all forced to work together in a way that may or may not be securely fastened at the joints.
With a cloud workload protection platform and container security protections in place, you can be sure that transfers of workloads within the cloud are handled securely by a platform that integrates between all of the containers at once. This can even include automated application control to protect the integrity of your containers and even allows for a more centralized view of the workload’s coverage from each virtual machine to the next.
Native CSP Security
Whoever your cloud service provider (CSP) is, they should be offering security options of their own, with controls like third-party integration management, native telemetry, and the ability to monitor data consumption. When choosing a CSP, it’s important to know how configurable their native security is, and how appropriate their security options are for the requirements of your data compliance standards.
DevSecOps Approach
When application development becomes even more complex and with faster turnarounds than ever, the needs of the DevOps approach require change. Security was a last-stage development task, compartmentalized separately from that of development and of operations with a different team at the helm and different responsibilities to handle.
Now, though, DevSecOps (development, security, and operations) is the approach that is required to produce quality secure products at a sustainable rate: by implementing a culture that shares security, development, and operations responsibilities in end-to-end continuous feedback, this newest approach has to be adopted in cloud environments for the best possible integration of security measures.
Cloud Security Strategy
It may seem obvious, but everyone needs a strategy for their security approach. Firstly, defining your current security posture makes you aware of where you are in your protection goals, and more importantly, where your gaps are. By looking at the gaps in your cloud security, you can also redefine your goals to fit these and complete the security outlook: you need to build an expectation that wherever there’s a gap, there’s a way to improve your coverage.
With that understanding comes your strategy. You need to come up with the best tools, approaches, guidelines, and team to address the needs you’ve found — and by the time you’ve done this, you’ve built a strategy that is actionable and informed by real insights.
Data Governance
It’s not just the strategy that needs defining when working on improving your cloud security. You also need to know where you stand in terms of data governance, even checking to see if your business’s current approach is compliant with the needs of your organization. Some industries have strict regulations on how data should be handled and protected, and with that comes guidelines on how you as a user can actively meet these expectations. The regulatory requirements are the general baseline of cloud security: if you fall below the expected data governance requirements of your business, your security strategy is already failing.
Therefore, it’s crucial to eliminate doubt by researching your industry’s requirements, defining the standards in place, and using those to inform your official and unofficial strategies for cloud security. Everything you do, every tool you use, should fall in line with whatever standards you know you need to set for the business to be compliant.
Conclusion
Cloud security must-haves are a complex but important facet of today’s digital environment. As such, you need to keep various solutions and various preparations in place to keep your cloud apps secure — and by implementing the six must-haves above, your business is one step closer to creating the most secure cloud operations possible. So, start implementing today!
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