Cloud Security: Essential Practices and Tools
CLOUD SECURITY GUIDE FOR MID-SIZE ENTERPRISES
As organizations move more information and applications to the cloud, there are growing concerns for data security and regulatory compliance.
70% of organizations ?using a public cloud experienced a security incident in 2020.
--(Sophos State of Cloud Security, 2020 report).
Threats can come from anywhere — whether bad actors trying to compromise credentials and breach your systems or employees not following privacy and encryption standards on sensitive data. It only takes one weak link to wreak havoc.
Cloud-based threats and cyber-attacks are on the rise across the landscape, including IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS services. Bad actors try to target the weakest link across exposure points, including your core infrastructure, identities, network, data, devices, and apps to gain access to corporate resources and valuable data.?
Cloud security is more important than ever before.
Rapid adoption of cloud has also introduced additional complexity and challenges for many organizations, including the need for more sophisticated cloud security solutions.
Cloud security refers to the interconnected strategy, technologies, controls, processes, and policies to secure a cloud computing environment against cyber threats. For many organizations, cloud security is a new and unfamiliar landscape. While many of the security principles remain the same as on-premises, the implementation is often very different.
Let’s explore what we believe are the essential practices and tools to enable them to achieve confidence in your cloud security model.?
PRACTICE #1:
Risk and Control Assessment
Security risk and control assessments ?form the first stage of a comprehensive and proactive approach to cybersecurity and risk management. The objective of a security assessment is to evaluate and outline the existing security practices in place, the weaknesses, vulnerabilities and the gaps between the existing security posture and where it should be.?
Most organizations do not have comprehensive visibility into their security posture and aren't sufficiently prepared to protect against and respond to the threats that could cause significant harm. Many mid-sized organizations with more limited resources are forced to rely on ill equipped IT teams to carry out security functions. This approach usually leads to a reactive, 'whack-a-mole' program that leaves the organization with a poor cybersecurity posture and unable to detect and prevent threats before they happen.
We see organizations using these assessments to kickstart new conversations and investments into their cybersecurity and overall risk management agendas.
By carrying out a risk and control assessment, organizations can improve their visibility into unknown threats and move more proactively based on intelligence of where their existing vulnerabilities are, what their root causes are, and how to mitigate them.
The output is a comprehensive risk and control analysis outlining risk and control posture and vulnerabilities as well as recommendations to mitigate the issues.
How to do it:
PRACTICE #2:
Identity and Access Management
Identity is at the foundation of security. You must protect your identities to protect your data and resources. Traditional security practices are not enough to defend against modern security attacks. Security is today's digital environment and threat landscape requires you to “assume breach.” In other words, protect as though the attacker has breached the network perimeter. Today, users work from many locations with multiple devices and apps.
Embrace a Zero-Trust Model
Zero trust is a proactive, integrated approach to security that follows the principles of verifying the identity of everything and anything trying to authenticate or connect before granting access. As part of a modern security framework,?zero trust should extend throughout the organization and serve as a foundational principle in your end-to-end security strategy.
How to do it:
You can do this by implementing Zero Trust controls and technologies across six foundational elements.
Then, use these practices and tools to tie it together:
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PRACTICE #3:
Threat and Information Protection
Consistent with global trends -- and given recent geopolitical events -- our clients remain on high alert about the increasing volume of cyber threats as well as the increasing sophistication and impact of attacks. By prioritizing an integrated and automated threat protection program, you can meet the demands for advanced security to protect vital business and personal information.
It only takes one weak link to wreak havoc. With a strong security posture, organizations can manage their threat landscape from end to end, reinforced with integrated and comprehensive security tools, policies, training and compliance. By bringing these elements together, organizations can build layers of protection to proactively protect against threats and reduce the risk of costly data breaches and compliance violations.?
Our clients also tell us about the difficulties they have to holistically and consistently protect and govern their information. This is an especially critical issue for highly regulated industries.?For instance, one report uncovered that 64% of organizations admit that employees externally share PII and other sensitive business data without encryption.
Operational security posture—protect, detect, and respond—should be enabled and informed by unparalleled security tools and intelligence to identify rapidly evolving threats early so you can respond quickly.
Mitigate Threats
Operational security posture—protect, detect, and respond—should be informed by unparalleled security intelligence to identify rapidly evolving threats early so you can respond quickly.
How to do it:
Boost Organizational?Security Awareness
Just as?cloud adoption ?is a journey, cloud security is also an ongoing journey of incremental progress and maturity, not a static destination. As organizations adopt the cloud, they quickly find that static security processes cannot keep up with the pace of change in cloud platforms, the threat environment, and the evolution of security technologies. A strong security posture depends on an organizational culture that fosters the right behaviors to spread adoption of new controls.
How to do it:
Protect the Network
We’re in a time of transformation for network security. As the landscape changes, your security solutions must meet the challenges of the evolving threat landscape and make it more difficult for attackers to exploit networks.
How to do it:
The Plus+ Approach to Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity has become a top priority for many organizations in order to protect their brand, the trust of their clients, and their ability to operate successfully. Our?comprehensive approach to cybersecurity ?help clients understand, address and actively manage the risks they face to successfully operate their business in a secure cloud.?We put our 20+ years of experience to work to help you successfully navigate the rapidly evolving cybersecurity landscape.
Plus+ Consulting is classified as a Registered Provider Organization (RPO) by the CMMC-AB.
?We offer the convenience of choosing a standalone vulnerability scan or receiving one as part of our?Risk and Control Assessment . We enumerate every live host, open port, and available service during the course of the assessment. Then we let you know what the most severe threats are, so we can focus on those to maximize your ROI on the scan.
We can also help you with expert penetration testing if your organization needs a more in-depth solution. We have a range of pen test methodologies:
Safeguard Your Business Assets With Confidence
We help mid-size to large organizations across many industries identify their cyber threats and design comprehensive programs to manage, remediate, and control these risks across their organization.
Get the guidance and capabilities you need for peace of mind knowing your sensitive business assets are safeguarded.We can help you navigate the rapidly-evolving cybersecurity landscape and secure your business now and in the future against the constantly changing range of cyber threats.
To get started,?speak with one of our cybersecurity advisors ?today.
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