Cloud Security Solutions to Keep Your Information Protected

With cloud services, cybercriminals have a larger data surface to target in attacks, and companies have little to no control over user access to data and a lack of visibility into their data storage. The initial transition from traditional to cloud storage for any business is fraught with these challenges and more, and new obstacles to protecting your data will continually arise over time as new cyberattacks come to prominence and compliance rules and insurance policies change.

Further complicating cloud security is the premise that this is a shared responsibility between your company and the cloud provider. Any lack of clarity on aspects that are your responsibility versus ones that fall on the provider can create security gaps that increase your risk of being victimized by cyber threats.

While protecting the infrastructure and restricting access to the physical hosts and network should always fall on the provider; and securing cloud accounts, managing user permissions, encrypting data, and remaining compliant should always fall on the company; other responsibilities will be delegated depending on the specific service model, which may cause confusion and communication errors.

Here is a deep dive into the top cloud security challenges and tips on how you can help combat them in your organization.

Larger Attack Surfaces

Just as cloud services have opened up opportunities for companies to store and access data more conveniently, they have also provided more methods for cybercriminals to access your valued data. Hackers may be able to get into your system from multiple touchpoints, including local networks, cloud infrastructure, insiders, endpoints, and data repositories.

Companies using cloud services will have to rethink their entire security system, as security policies and practices will have to take into account every potential access point in this larger attack surface. For cybersecurity considerations, network perimeters now extend to encompass remote sites and workers and mobile applications in many companies’ cases, and cloud deployment often plays a large role in this activity.

As a result, businesses must keep up and check-in consistently with the quality and performance of firewalls and anti-malware programs as well as cybersecurity policies, and monitor and test real-time alerts of user activity and data traffic in their networks. A comprehensive and consistent approach to data encryption will also be necessary to ensure the protection of data in transit.

Less Visibility

In some service models, the cloud provider has complete control over their infrastructure and does not allow companies to access or view the infrastructure layer. This prevents businesses from being able to accurately visualize their cloud environments or identify, quantify, or locate their valuable data assets within them.

One survey found that less than 20 percent of cloud users have the proper data to sufficiently monitor their public cloud environments, while 87 percent are concerned their lack of visibility may be masking unknown security threats. With many companies running their critical applications on public cloud infrastructure, organizations need better monitoring abilities to ensure their cloud data is protected.

Lack of Controls

Companies using cloud services are often given less control over privileges for their employees and other cloud users than they would have in native systems. Most cloud providers configure user roles loosely, giving too many significant and unneeded privileges to untrained or lower-level users such as the ability to add or delete assets.

In a survey of over 300 CISOs and IT decision-makers, 67 percent reported concerns over security misconfigurations and 64 percent said that their lack of visibility into access settings and activities highly contributed to cloud data breaches. Additionally, 61 percent said that access management and permission errors created a significant vulnerability to cybersecurity threats.

Companies need to be able to adjust their access policies frequently to fit changing responsibilities on projects within their organizations. However, the ability to do so is again affected by the specific service model set forth by the cloud provider, which many businesses may not fully understand upfront, causing challenges further down the line.

Insufficient Security Tool Integrations

Companies need their security tools to work consistently across different environments, but not all security tools and cloud services are necessarily compatible with one another or optimal to use together. This creates obstacles for consistent cybersecurity in multi-cloud or hybrid environments where organizations need their tools and policies to operate seamlessly on all platforms, including public cloud, private cloud, and on-premise environments.

Organizations suffering from vulnerabilities related to this challenge should consider transitioning to new or updated security technologies or partnering with an outsourced cybersecurity company who is better-versed in cloud security. There are various cloud security solutions available that combine strategic planning with tooling made specifically to address the issues discussed above like the larger attack surface, lack of visibility into infrastructures, and less access control and management capabilities.

Inconsistent Compliance and Coverage

While leading cloud companies have aligned themselves with well-known accreditation programs and standards, ensuring consistent cloud compliance for workload and data processes ultimately falls to cloud users. Due to the other obstacles, we’ve previously discussed like reduced visibility into cloud platforms, compliance audits can be inconsistent and not show the full picture. An effective way to solve this is to use security tools that can test compliance regularly based on specific rule sets that match your needs and alert users to any misconfigurations, staying updated on the latest and changing compliance rules.

A related issue is the continuous evolution of insurance policies as new cybersecurity threats arise. Since cloud security is still relatively new and best practices to ensure protection are constantly changing, insurance companies often update policies to require businesses to have the latest or most advanced cyber threat protection processes and tools in place. As a result, companies should remain in touch with their insurance brokers over time to ensure consistent coverage in case a breach event occurs.

Inversion6 Delivers Superior Cloud Security Solutions

Inversion6 can support your organization with cloud security solutions that increase your visibility into cloud authentication and activity, give you greater access control management, and send you automatic alerts based on suspicious cloud usage with LogRhythm’s NextGen SIEM Platform. We also provide you with pre-built reports highlighting access, usage, and modifications as well as advanced security analytics, so you always remain apprised of what’s happening in your network, know how well your cybersecurity system is performing, and are able to quickly make any necessary shifts in your processes.

Contact Inversion6 now to discover how our top-of-the-line cloud security solutions can proactively address vulnerabilities to avoid cyber threats.