What is Cloud Security? Everything you need to know

How does Cloud Security work?

Cloud security works by having strategies and best practices for applications and data hosted in the cloud. Security in the cloud focuses on integrating policies, processes, and technologies. It aims to protect data, ensure compliance, and control access and authentication.

Any chain is as strong as its weakest link, much like a cloud environment’s security hinges on its most vulnerable point.

Thus, efficient cloud security uses multiple, harmonious technologies and tools. They protect applications, systems, and data against threats in the cloud's several layers:

1. Level 1: Virtualisation
2. Level 2: Networking
3. Level 3: Operation System (OS)
4. Level 4: Application

Unlike traditional security, which is about protecting a perimeter, cloud security protects resources and data individually. In other words, we need to have more granular security. 

For instance:

• At the Operating System (OS) level, IAM ensures only authorised users can access critical system functions and resources.
• At the network level, firewalls and VPNs filter traffic and create secure tunnels.
• At the application level, sensitive data can be encrypted using protocols like TLS for data in transit and AES for stored data.
• At the virtualisation level, consider using hypervisor-level security controls to protect against breaches across Virtual Machines (VMs).

Why is Cloud Security important?

Now, why should you even care about Cloud Security? The point is, all the valuable stuff in the cloud is a tempting target for hackers. Meanwhile, services and tools from cloud service providers are growing constantly, and with many enterprises using them, securing your cloud environment and the data within becomes crucial.

In particular, a hybrid cloud (public cloud + private data centres) can possess loads of vulnerabilities and weak spots that malicious attackers can exploit.

The absence of adequate cloud security can lead to many risks and devastating consequences, such as data breaches where information theft damages a company's reputation and significant financial losses, to name a few.

Without robust security measures, you turn your cloud environment into a playground for malicious activities.

That said, you don’t have to take on cloud security entirely alone. 

Cloud Security: a Shared Responsibility

In traditional app deployment, you were responsible for everything: the entire data centre, the servers you ran, and securing everything. Now, you offload some of these tasks to the cloud provider when you move to the cloud, shifting away from perimeter security.

Security in the cloud thus becomes a joint duty, as cloud service providers and users take on responsibility together – better known as “shared responsibility”. The shared responsibility model indicates three responsibilities:

1. The provider’s
2. The customer’s
3. Those according to the model

1) Generally speaking, cloud service providers secure the underlying cloud infrastructure (managing data centres and network architecture).

2) In contrast, customers are responsible for securing everything “running” in the cloud, such as their apps and customer data stored in cloud environments.

3) The responsibility between you and the cloud provider varies depending on which cloud model you consume:

• Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
• Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

In the image above, you can see the responsibilities of each strategy when it comes to security.

6 Pillars of cloud security

1. Access Control and Identity Access Management (IAM)

The last thing you want is the wrong people accessing critical cloud resources. This is where Identity Access Management (IAM) access management plays a crucial role.

Identity and Access Management, or IAM, is a set of processes, policies, and tools for defining and managing individual network entities' roles and access privileges across various cloud and on-premise applications. 

With IAM, you can control who has access to your resources and what they can do with them, thus reducing the risk of unauthorised access. This entails having robust authentication, authorisation and IAM practices in place. Also, don’t forget about strong password policies, multi-factor authentication, Single sign-on (SSO), permission time-outs, and so forth.

2. Strong Network Security

Secondly, but equally important, is robust network security that evolves around safeguarding data transfers, communication, etc., across your cloud environment. It’s about controlling access, monitoring and filtering traffic, and protecting your network infrastructure. 

There are a few things you can do for a strong network security:

• Firewalls: For traffic filtering, use firewalls to filter incoming and outgoing traffic while also ditching possible threats.
• Access control: As mentioned earlier, controlling access allows you to determine who has access to what, strengthening your security in the cloud.
• Segmentation: Ensure that your network is properly segmented, where smaller segments are contained and isolated. For instance, you can deploy business-critical resources and apps in logically isolated sections of the provider’s cloud network, such as a vNET in Azure.
• Micro-segmentation: Use subnets to micro-segment workloads from each other and implement granular security policies at subnet gateways.
• Virtual Private Networks (VPNs): You can establish VPNs to use secure tunnels for data transferring.

3. Change Management

Change management in cloud security encompasses systematically handling changes to IT systems, software, and services. It governs any changes and enforces compliance controls whenever a change is requested (such as provisioning a new server or transferring sensitive data).

Change management apps have auditing capabilities that track unusual behaviour and patterns deviating from set protocols. This lets you investigate thoroughly and trigger automation to rectify any issues that may occur frequently.

4. Shield your apps with next-gen Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Web Application Firewall, or WAF, is designed to examine and manage traffic to and from web application servers with granularity. This ensures that all data (both incoming and outgoing) is scrutinised for potential threats.

It also enhances endpoint security by auto-updating WAF rules in response to traffic changes. This provides dynamic protection against evolving threats.

Security is elevated further by positioning the WAF closer to microservices that run workloads. All in all, WAF is an essential component in the fight against web-based threats.

5. Data Protection

Data protection is fundamental in securing sensitive information stored in the cloud. It revolves around shielding your data from inquisitive eyes and assuring it’s available at all times. 

This pillar encompasses strategies like data encryption at all transport layers (both at rest and in transit) to prevent unauthorised access. However, backup and disaster also fall under the scope of data protection. 

What’s more, it involves strict data management policies and compliance measures. These ensure that data handling meets regulations, and maintains excellent storage hygiene. This includes finding misconfigured buckets and removing orphaned resources.

6. Continuous Monitoring

Cloud security suppliers offer robust Cloud Security Posture Management. This ensures a consistent use of rules and templates for governance and compliance.

It applies to creating virtual servers, checking for config violations, and auto-remediating when possible. Alongside improved security, this can lead to quicker incident response and remediation.

Biggest Cloud Security Challenges

Data breaches & unauthorised access

You wake up and find that your organisation's sensitive data has been stolen and spread across the internet. It’s truly a nightmare scenario, yet unfortunately, it has become a reality for many enterprises. But when it comes so far, encryption is your best friend.

Insecure APIs

Being the backdoors of your cloud environment, insecure APIs form one of the greatest threats to cloud security. If not secured accordingly, hackers can enter and create havoc.

So, always use secure coding practices to protect your APIs. Validate inputs and use proper authentication. 

But not only that: regularly audit your APIs for vulnerabilities. Think of it as a routine checkup to keep everything in top shape. 

Denial-of-service attack (DDoS)

The next threat is the denial of service, known as DDoS attacks. These attacks flood your systems with excessive traffic, which overwhelms your network or website and causes it to slow down or crash.

Lack of visibility and tracking

With more remote workers, businesses are more and more at risk. The list of authorised users in large firms is now in constant flux. 

Also, the number of devices people use to access company resources is staggering. They are across both public and private cloud environments. It's far from easy to track and monitor which resources are used, how data is accessed, who has access, and how it flows through the cloud.

Thus, you should ensure data isn't stored in insecure places, preventing the wrong people from getting access.

Insider threats

When we talk about insider threats, we refer to those who possess access to your systems but don’t use them like you’d like to. Consider an old employee seeking revenge. They might leak vital business data. Or, a malicious actor could infiltrate your organisation. One way or another, detecting and preventing an insider threat can be extremely hard.

To overcome insider threats, we need monitoring activities. They should watch everything in your organisation and use tools to detect unusual activities. Just as you protected your on-premise data centres with security cameras, we now need to do this virtually by monitoring your applications.

Advanced persistent threats (APTs)

Advanced persistent threats (APTs) are attacks often executed by an intruder or a team of malicious attackers who aim to get a long-term network presence to access sensitive data. These are often elite hackers who infiltrate your systems, holding a foothold while slowly pulling all your data as time goes by. And companies often realise too late when it happens.

Embrace the zero trust principle, use MFA, and provide secure web gateways to protect employees and their devices from web-based threats like malicious websites.

Risks from misconfigurations

Misconfigurations and human errors account for a mind-blowing count of security breaches. It is said that 99% of cloud security errors will be due to people. With just one wrong click or misconfigured setting, your cloud data can be all over the web, making it a massive threat to any organisation. As public cloud services are designed for convenient data and access sharing, many organisations still fail to secure their cloud infrastructure correctly. Consequently, misconfigurations occur, such as inadequate handling of permission controls or leaving default passwords.

Ever-changing workloads

One of the, if not the biggest drivers for cloud adoption is the possibility to scale up and down workloads whenever you wish to. But legacy security tools often cannot uphold policy controls within dynamic cloud environments, where workloads fly up and down anytime.

Increasing complexity

Yes, the cloud made deploying apps and infrastructures much easier. But as companies continue to adopt cloud services, the cloud infrastructure becomes more and more intricate. With multiple cloud platforms, multi-cloud, hybrid cloud, private cloud and on-prem environments and more services and 3rd party tools, a web of complexity is created, making it far from simple to maintain security standards and compliance across all components.

Increased attack surface

As more organisations adopt the cloud, the attack surface grows. The variety of cloud services, platforms, and configurations means each VM, service, or app integration can be a cybercriminal entry point.

Multitenancy

In cloud environments, multiple customers share the same physical infrastructure. This multitenancy model means that data from different organisations coexists. If security measures are not enforced, this can cause data leaks. A vulnerability impacting one tenant can also affect another (collateral damage).

Shadow IT

Shadow IT refers to employees who use apps and services without their organisation’s approval. Employees may resort to unauthorised cloud services to meet their needs, often bypassing existing security protocols. This can, unfortunately, lead to critical security gaps.

Cloud Compliance and Governance

Most cloud service providers have known compliance accreditations. Customers must have compliant workloads per government and internal standards.

What are the benefits of Cloud Security?

• Reduced capital costs by moving to the cloud rather than staying on-premise.
• Centralised security for networks comprised of various devices and endpoints.
• Scalability to adapt security measures as the organisation grows and changes.
• Automation, such as automatically updating and patching to protect against the latest risks
• Business continuity is strengthened through cloud backup solutions that minimise downtime.
• Redundancy by the means of using redundant servers for easy data restoration.
• The invaluable amount of services you can use to monitor compliance and security of your configurations (like numerous options for logging and verifying if everything is working as intended).
• Create an audit trail that would have been challenging to implement in a traditional data centre model.

6 Best Practices for Cloud Security

1. Strong access controls

First and foremost, use access controls so that only authorised users can access sensitive data. You can add an extra layer of security with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) instead of relying on just one password. At the same time, configure Role-based Access Control (RBAC), so users have access to only what’s needed. 

Meaning that, you limit access based on rules to ensure that users only have the permission they need and not a tiny bit more (the privilege principle).

2. Regularly update, patch and vulnerability scans

Even the best security tools are not useful when not kept up-to-date. That is why you should regularly update and patch systems to keep your systems up-to-date with the latest patches to close vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit. Always do this automatically. Also, regular vulnerability scans should be conducted to find any weaknesses attackers might spot and exploit.

3. Encryption

Data encryption at rest and in transit is about keeping sensitive information safe. Even when a malicious attacker manages to intercept, they won’t be able to read it or do anything without the key. You set up multifactor authentication along with strong passwords to ensure only the right people can access and regularly update software. 

4. Network segmentation

To secure your network, you can implement network segmentation or even micro-segmentation to divide your network into smaller, more secure zones to limit the impact of potential breaches. VPNs are also a great way to create secure tunnels for remote access.

5. Monitoring and logging

When cloud security pops up in the minds, many often only think about preventing malicious attackers from getting in. But cloud security is much more than that. It’s about having eyes on what’s happening inside your apps. So you should have centralised monitoring and logging to see everything in the cloud. Monitor your environment continuously and keep detailed logs to detect any signs of intrusion and respond to threats quickly.

6. Employee training

Cloud security is not just about technology. People are just as important. So, training your employees on best security practices is key, as a tiny mistake can cause big problems with drastic consequences. Train your employees on best security practices, such as recognising phishing, creating strong passwords, and handling sensitive data.

What types of cloud security solutions are there?

Identity and access management (IAM)

IAM tools and services allow you to centrally manage user identities and access permissions to specific resources (both cloud-based or on-premise). Doing so ensures solely authorised users can access sensitive resources. 

As an organisation, you must ensure that everyone involved with you (employees, contractors, business partners) all have minimum access to resources – the least-privilege principle (regardless of whether that’s in a remote or onsite working setup).

Data loss prevention (DLP)

Data loss prevention (DLP) solutions protect sensitive data from being lost, accessed by unauthorised users or even being misused by malicious actors. It realises this by using a mixture of remediation alerts, encryption, and other anticipative measures to shield stored data at all forms (both in motion and at rest).

Security information and event management (SIEM)

Security information and event management (SIEM) is a complete security orchestration solution. It automates threat monitoring, detection and response in cloud-based environments. 

That is to say, SIEM tools can be used to analyse logs and detect potential threats. It uses AI and ML (Machine Learning) technologies, which allow you to aggregate and analyse security data from multiple sources while gathering real-time insights and alerts on potential threats.

Intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS)

While talking about cloud security solutions, let’s not forget about intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS). IDPS monitor network traffic for suspicious activity and provides alerts and automatic responses to potential intrusions. It’s like having someone constantly watching for suspicious activities and sounding the alarm when something looks a bit fishy.

Cloud workload protection platform (CWPP)

As organisations have instituted processes that help developers build and deploy features faster, there’s a greater risk that security checks will be missed during development. A cloud workload protection platform helps secure the computing, storage, and networking capabilities needed by applications in the cloud. It identifies workloads in public, private, and hybrid cloud environments and scans them for vulnerabilities. If vulnerabilities are discovered, the solution will suggest controls to fix them.

Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB)

With cloud services being as easy to access as the click of a button, accessible from various devices and locations, it may become challenging to foresee all that goes on in your cloud environment, such as who uses what and when. Add the security challenges posed by the growing complexity of cloud environments on top of that, and the cloud security vulnerability pile stacks up even more. But this is where Cloud access security brokers (CASB) come in, shedding light on your cloud activities. This way, you can understand better the access and usage of cloud resources. 

While serving as intermediaries between cloud users and providers, CASBs provide a risk assessment of each app. At the same time, it helps enforce security policies, protect sensitive data, and meet compliance goals by ensuring alignment with regulations (like HIPAA).

Cloud security posture management (CSPM)

Cloud misconfigurations are occasional. They are often due to a lack of awareness of who is responsible for cloud configurations and security. But, cloud security posture management (CSPM) solutions solve this problem. They do so by constantly checking for misconfigurations, unauthorised access, and malicious activity in the environment. 

CSPM automatically monitors configurations and checks compliance with industry standards. It alerts you to any weak spots before they can cause harm. CSPM ensures your security policies are enforced, not just checked. This helps you stay ahead of threats and maintain a strong security posture. And not only that, automating the processes also implies fewer mistakes will occur that would happen if done manually.

Public Key Infrastructure (KPI)

Public Key Infrastructure underpins secure communications by managing digital certificates and encryption keys. PKI solutions enable all types of organisations to set trust between users and devices, while ensuring data remains sensitive and confidential.

Learn about tools to secure your azure environment: Secure your data science environment in Azure: 6 unmissable tools!

Closing thoughts

Regardless of whether you are a solo coder or a big company, taking cloud security seriously can make or break your success. Make sure only authorised users can access your sensitive resources and encrypt data, so you can set the first steps towards a secure cloud.

The bottom line is that cloud security is an ongoing process which isn’t just about technology; it’s about people.

That’s why you need employee training and awareness so your employees know how to spot phishing attempts, create strong passwords, and handle sensitive data securely. 

We strongly recommend a step-by-step approach. Start by understanding the shared responsibility model with your cloud provider. 

And to be fair: cloud security is far from easy. Instead, it requires constant vigilance and effort. But with the right tools, strategies, mindset, and a trusted partner like Intercept, you can ensure a secure cloud environment.