How to use new cloud security trends to your advantage

Moving to the cloud comes with the need to develop new responsibilities, new skill sets, and new processes. However, the most important part of moving to the cloud is ensuring its ongoing security.

Unfortunately, organizations have a long way to go if they want to secure their cloud workloads. The latest research from (ISC)² reports that 93% of organizations are moderately or extremely concerned about cloud security, and one in four organizations had a confirmed cloud security incident in the past 12 months.

Cyber threat intelligence that provides details about risks to your digital assets is vital, particularly when it comes to cloud deployment or architecture. Let’s take a look at some of the most important trends in cloud security and discuss they could influence your overall cloud strategy.

The latest trends in cloud security: the good, the bad, and the ugly

Trends in cloud security run the gamut from positive to negative. Some of the more positive trends center on the emergence of new technologies that provide advanced threat detection and mitigation, while the more negative trends result from common gaps in organizations’ security postures as well as the increasing sophistication of cyber-attacks.

The good

Good trends include the emergence of DevSecOps. Short for development, security, and operations, DevSecOps is the practice of automating and integrating security into all parts of the software development lifecycle, making it possible to secure software development without impacting speed and productivity. Encryption and bring your own key (BYOK) – a model in which you have full control of your encryption keys – also significantly improves data security while minimizing exfiltration opportunities.

The bad

Not all trends in cloud security are helpful. For example, the rise of APIs. This type of software interface is vital when it comes to data transfer and communication between applications, but many organizations don’t follow proper security protocols for APIs. Oftentimes, the culprit is that IT teams wrongly assume that API security is part of their existing web application protections. This makes them targets for threat actors.

However, sometimes the threat actor isn’t exploiting external-facing applications; rather, they’re inside your organization. While everyone might like to assume that anyone who has legitimate access to their network would never do something nefarious, insider attacks are surprisingly common while simultaneously being almost impossible to detect in advance.

The ugly

The biggest, baddest negative cloud security trend of them all is probably zero-day exploits. These are pre-existing bugs or vulnerabilities baked into your software or infrastructure that cyber security professionals aren’t aware of yet. Cyber criminals are always on the lookout for such exploits and tend to take advantage of them as soon as they hear word, far before proper patches can be deployed.

Strategies & tools to help you keep up

An increasing number of organizations are making use of the cloud for its flexibility and adaptability in a competitive marketplace. Ever-expanding multi-cloud and hybrid environments are now the norm, but with mass adoption of cloud technology comes an ever-increasing volume and sophistication of cyber threats, driving the need for cloud security.

Cloud security is a shared responsibility between you and your cloud service provider. It is a complex interaction of technologies, controls, processes, and policies that must be highly personalized to your organization's unique requirements. Common best practices include the following:

Encryption

Data encryption has long been a security best practice and is even more critical once you move to the cloud. Storing data on a third-party platform and sending it back and forth between your network and the cloud service creates multiple points of vulnerability. Often a cloud provider’s built-in encryption services are not enough. Consider using your own encryption solutions and your own encryption keys to maximize security and maintain full control.

Endpoint security

Most users will access your cloud services through web browsers. Because of this, advanced client-side security is critical when it comes to keeping your users' browsers up-to-date and protected from exploits. Consider implementing an endpoint security solution to protect your end-user devices. Look for a solution that includes firewalls, antivirus, mobile device security, intrusion detection tools, sandboxes, machine learning, threat feeds and automated response.

Authentication

At a minimum, all passwords should require one uppercase letter, one lower-case letter, one number, one symbol, and a minimum of 14 characters. Create policies that demand users update their password at most after every 90 days and set it so the system remembers the last 24 passwords. As an additional layer of security, you should also implement Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), which requires users to add two or more pieces of evidence to authenticate their identity, which would allow you to increase the number of days between password changes and reduce the number of passwords before allowing re-use.

Data encryption and backup

Look for an experienced service provider who offers you a set of tools to help you easily encrypt your data in transit and at rest. This will ensure the same level of protection for any internal data transit within the cloud service provider, or transit between the cloud service provider and other services where APIs may be exposed. Solutions such as SoftwareONE’s BackupSimple also provide a highly secure backup-as-a-service offering to recover data that is accidentally deleted.

Personalizing your cloud security requires advanced strategies, tools, and expertise to ensure proper implementation. Some such tools and solutions provided by SoftwareONE include the following:

• Cloud workload security service: This service helps protect your virtual servers in a multi-cloud and hybrid environment by working with you to plan, build, and run a security solution that continuously monitors your environment and responds to security incidents.
• Cybersecurity user awareness services: This service helps you protect your business against social engineering threats by better educating your workforce through a lasting, proven threat awareness and education program.
• Managed detection and response services: These services provide you with the hands-on, 24x7 monitoring, proactive threat hunting, effective response support, and tailored security guidance to stop malicious or unauthorized activity and help you accelerate your security maturity.
• Vulnerability assessment & penetration testing service: This service helps uncover vulnerabilities in your network and web applications, assess your organization's exposure to vulnerabilities, evaluate the risks to your organization, and provide you with prioritized remediation recommendations to improve your security posture.

All the tools and services described above play different roles in keeping your cloud workload secure. Together, they form a strong framework for a larger cloud and network security strategy.