The 4 Most Crucial Cloud Security Technologies For Your Success

The notion of a computer virus reared its ugly head over a half-century ago thirty years before the first connection with ARPANET (the first version of the Internet). In 1971 users were startled to see, “I’m the creeper, catch me if you can,” popping up on the screen, avoiding the mouse and any keyboard deletion attempts. Indeed, it was a relatively harmless worm, replicating itself and spreading to other systems, leaving messages wherever it went.

The rest of the twentieth century and early 2000s brought us a sequence of security-related events. It started with application users detailing their IDs and passwords on a “Post-it.” The latter would be like stopping a raging fire with a water pistol by today’s cyber-criminal sophistication levels. After that:

• Businesses waded into the digital era more concerned with learning the new technologies. They never dreamed anyone was intensely interested in obstructing their systems while they weren’t watching.
• An awakening eventually emerged that security was a significant issue. Nonetheless, clumsy protocols generated a never-ending string of stops and starts, over-reliant on IT support every time someone forgot their user-name and password.
• From there, it transcended into painstakingly tracking every entry from hiring until termination of any disgruntled employee suspected of transplanting some cyber-connected revenge in the system.
• The floppy disk and tape appeared with great fanfare as a way to record sensitive data. Physically sending these to banks and other critical business facilitators opened security gaps as deep and wide as the Grand Canyon.
• Companies finally resorted to the handful of accounting firms with IT capability to have their back.

As they say in the classics, “We’ve come a long way, baby” since those dark ages but is it enough?

Why can’t business leaders ignore cyber-criminality?

In the modern digital era, blocking cyber-hackers targeting our systems with all the latest apps at their disposal 24/7/365 is a daunting challenge.

1. Visibility and Compliance

Continuous improvement depends on full cloud environment transparency and insight. It doesn’t just happen. The pivotal steps under this heading are:

1. Automating the cloud’s asset inventory process to have a quick and clear view of the servers, provider services, users, and cloud tools (e.g., load balancers). Multi-cloud solutions, in particular, offered by different providers pose a complex and urgent challenge and, in cases, still manually reliant when developing and maintaining. Automation will create a streamlined, centralized inventory of all cloud-based assets.
2. CASBs routinely connect to security frameworks recommended by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, ISO 27001, amongst others. Here’s the thing:
   • IT professionals are digital generalists not security experts.
   • They find the framework complexities are a significant obstruction.

   An automated cloud security solution will provide benefits like:

   • Continual reporting.
   • Compliance.
   • Remediation controls.

   These are features designed to keep things rolling and in line with the pace demanded by most cloud users.

3. Data labeling and rating its sensitivity are integral to a comprehensive solution. Also, we must aim at seamless controls to:
   • Appropriately position the various data types (e.g., software-as-a-service application or cloud-provider storage).
   • Determine the degree of exposure (i.e., who can and cannot access it).
   • Leverage off the CASB tools’ role-based data access, making it broadly usable to general IT technologists.

Here are four of them at the front of the conversation:

2. Computer-based security a key focus

Here is where we get into the device side of things in two primary aspects, namely delving into the platform and its continuous operation. Please see below:

1. Platform as a Service (PaaS)
   This covers security for end-systems, managed services, and various workloads functioning inside the cloud-based on:
   • Automated vulnerability management identifying and combating vulnerabilities over the entire application lifecycle.
   • Erasing emerging and established risks converging on cloud-native environments.
2. Ongoing operational security
   Defines a fundamental requirement at the center of all cloud security aspects related to “compute-engine” or “compute-workload.” The idea is to achieve automatic and ongoing inspection of cloud activity with water-tight remedies, pinpointing anomalous or malicious activity, then eradicating it.

3. Network protections

Network protection applies equally on-premises and in-the-cloud. It brings us to two primary considerations:

1. Micro-segmentation
   A compelling methodology that goes to the bedrock of digital security thinking. It creates exclusive zones that:
   • Separate workloads and secure them individually.
   • Segregate applications and workloads to confuse and dissipate all attacker attempts at moving laterally the key to infecting hosts in a smooth sequence.
   • Minimize damage by erecting impregnable digital fences between applications and the operating environment, called containerization.
2. Live “inline” flow of traffic.
   A groundbreaking component of network protection that extends the border down to the user level. It’s an automated solution that permits authorized users to access cloud-based data securely. The latter is relevant to their work assignments while simultaneously reflecting possible threats pertinent to those unique activities.

4. Identity security

In short, mapping user and machine identities with succinct descriptions of “allowed to do” stipulations.  This process requires substantial tech forethought and navigation, considering that it requires a system where machines can only communicate with other devices tied into accomplishing the application.

Cybercriminals know that government targets offer lucrative rewards, more to climb into the ID theft side of things than anything else. It’s on record that government ID theft is a mainstream racket opening up multiple tax fraud opportunities. They also construct schemes centered on claiming government benefits, making job applications, and stealing information after crossing into restricted clearance zones.

Conclusion

The four pillars of cloud security, described above, require collaboration going far beyond CASBs calling on cutting-edge vendors like CherryRoad Technologies Inc. In essence, it demands a vigilant, multi-technology approach. If ever there was a calling for all key players to unify within a focused security strategy, it’s today there’s no time to waste.

Need help beating your cloud security challenges? We have helped hundreds of clients assess and achieve sound and seamless cloud security. We can help you too. To know more about CherryRoad cloud security services, mail us at info@cherryroad.com.