How can you use threat modeling to strengthen cloud storage encryption?

1 What is threat modeling?

Threat modeling is a systematic process of identifying, analyzing, and prioritizing the possible threats that could affect your system or application. It helps you understand the attack surface, the assets, the adversaries, and the scenarios that could lead to security incidents. By doing threat modeling, you can design and implement more effective security measures, such as encryption, authentication, authorization, logging, monitoring, and backup. Threat modeling is an essential part of the secure development lifecycle and should be done early and often.

2 How to do threat modeling for cloud storage encryption?

Threat modeling is an important step for cloud storage encryption, and one of the most common and widely used frameworks is STRIDE. STRIDE stands for Spoofing, Tampering, Repudiation, Information disclosure, Denial of service, and Elevation of privilege. To understand these threats better, you should ask yourself questions about their sources and motivations, targets and impacts, existing controls and gaps in your encryption strategy, as well as possible mitigations and trade-offs. To visualize the data flows, components, boundaries, and trust levels of your cloud storage encryption more clearly, you can use a tool like Microsoft Threat Modeling Tool or draw a diagram. Additionally, you can assign a risk rating to each threat based on its likelihood and severity to prioritize the most critical threats and focus on the most effective solutions.

3 How to encrypt your data in cloud storage?

There are two main ways to encrypt your data in cloud storage: client-side encryption and server-side encryption. Client-side encryption means that you encrypt your data before sending it to the cloud storage provider. You have full control over the encryption keys and algorithms, and you can use your own tools or libraries to perform the encryption. However, this also means that you are responsible for managing and protecting the keys, and that you may face compatibility and performance issues with some cloud storage features.

Server-side encryption means that the cloud storage provider encrypts your data after receiving it. The provider handles the encryption keys and algorithms, and you can use their built-in features or services to enable the encryption. However, this also means that you have less control over the encryption process, and that you have to trust the provider to secure the keys and prevent unauthorized access.

5 How to monitor and audit your cloud storage encryption?

Encrypting your data in cloud storage is not a one-time task, and you must monitor and audit your encryption strategy to ensure it is meeting your security goals. To do this, you should use logging and alerting tools to track encryption-related events, such as key generation, rotation, deletion, or access. Additionally, you can use encryption metadata to verify the encryption status, method, and key of your data. Testing tools can check the encryption strength, performance, and functionality of your data in cloud storage. Moreover, reporting tools can generate and review encryption metrics such as coverage, usage and compliance. Lastly, auditing tools can assess and validate the encryption policies, procedures and controls of your cloud storage provider. By monitoring and auditing your cloud storage encryption you can detect issues or anomalies quickly, measure and improve its effectiveness and efficiency.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?