Information Security: Cloud computing technologies are already well established in virtually all industries, even those with sensitive and restricted information, thanks to well-known scalability, storage and development facilities.
Infrastructure services have become increasingly popular and sophisticated as a direct derivation of these and other characteristics of the modality; nowadays, it is common to find companies offering infrastructure services and platforms as a service (IaaS and PaaS) in the most common acronyms).
At the same time, server less frameworks and services that provide functions and backend as services (FaaS and BaaS, respectively) have been gaining ground, relying on the strength of the Cloud to bring a reliable service and attract customers and users. Unfortunately, like all the great evolutionary leaps in technology, the popularization of these solutions has attracted the interest of cybercriminals. New techniques and features were developed specifically to affect this type of technology, which is already worrying IT and security teams in organizations worldwide.
The Risks Of The Cloud
To establish an effective defense for your organization against the new range of digital threats, it is critical to understand the dangers associated with the Cloud and the services that derive from it. Among the various security problems that the Cloud offers, three main security risks in this environment are:
Attack Surface Expansion
The preference for hybrid Cloud environments brings several advantages in terms of flexibility in applications and systems, which is why many organizations prefer it. However, when this modality combines on-premises environments with public and private clouds, the attack surface can increase, creating gaps significantly when security tools are not updated and optimized for the characteristics of each domain.
Similarly, the IoT, which has primarily grown thanks to the Cloud, also helps to expand this surface, with malware explicitly developed for these devices.
Expansion Of North-South Traffic
The Cloud implies more data transit outside the company’s local networks; this additional traffic, while having end-to-end protection and encryption in most cases, can attract the interest of criminals who seek to attack endpoints to gain access to forwarded data to Cloud servers.
Specific Exploits
Vulnerabilities in containers, for example, can expose applications to abuse by malicious actors, allowing them to access networks and environments illegally. With the increase in the use of the Cloud and technologies like these, the increasing trend of exploits targeting them is inevitable.
More Performance, Less Risk
Given the clear advantages of using the Cloud for business, investing in strategy and tools to keep your environments safe is the solution. Prevention, rather than remediation, should be the focus of anyone who wants to use these technologies, minimizing risk and exposure; The following points should provide a good starting point for a solid strategy:
Keep The Whole Environment Safe
As mentioned, cybercriminals look at IoT endpoints and devices interested in their search for new targets. This makes it essential to use defense technologies that can protect the entire environment, from endpoints to servers (whether local, hybrid, virtual, or Cloud), with equal efficiency and ability to integrate between tools. Additionally, security must be automated and intelligent, prioritizing alerts and potential problems and informing the security team properly and efficiently.
Rank And Train Your Team
Access rules for areas with sensitive data are essential to prevent the action of internal malicious actors’ movements and mitigate the effect of successful phishing actions. Likewise, training the team, so everyone has a security mindset, especially in environments with practices such as BYOD or with many connections of mobile devices on the network, helps prevent incidents.
Invest In Qualified Professionals
Nothing replaces the experience and qualification of professionals trained to identify and solve security incidents. Still, the internal IT team cannot always meet the needs generated by the current threat scenario. In this case, investing in outsourcing this type of service can represent more effectiveness in security and better cost-benefit in this area. The recommended thing is to have a supplier that studies your needs and can bring solutions focused on the reality of your business, minimizing risks.
These practices are not the only ones to consider, but they are essential for creating a safe environment. When thinking about using the Cloud and related services such as FaaS, PaaS, BaaS and others, these actions gain even greater importance; the use of automated security in conjunction with MSS services, for example, helps to reduce potential vulnerabilities in systems and applications, while responding more quickly to exploit actions and other breaches and abuses of server less frameworks.
