Cloud Security, The New Frontier

If you are familiar with the cloud then I would skip over this paragraph. For those new to the cloud or are a little fuzzy on the details, here is a brief overview. The “cloud” is referring to a server farm managed and maintained typically by a third party vendor. Some popular companies that offer public cloud-based services are Amazon Web Services or AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. In addition to public cloud solutions, many companies offer private cloud-based solutions such as Microsoft Private Cloud, VMware vCloud, and OpenStack Private cloud. There are three types of cloud deployments. They are Software as a Service known as SaasS, infrastructure as a Service known as IaaS, and platform as a service known as PaaS. Each deployment type can be utilized and leveraged by business to increase productivity and decrease it costs.

Cloud services are attractive options for business as it removes the cost and burden of physically maintaining servers. Unfortunately, a misconception exists that cloud providers oversee and maintains a complete security solution for customers. The responsibility is in fact split between the cloud vendor and the customer. The cloud vendor provides the physical security of servers and implements operating system level security patches, but it is the customer's responsibility to secure their data and their actual instances. This has been a challenging issue to address until recently as most businesses traditionally have relied on only 2nd or 3rd generation-based protections. In a cloud-based solution however, the business has very limited control over perimeter security. This is even more dangerous as the current cyber attacks are 4th and 5th generation level attacks. This dynamic has left many businesses dangerously exposed.

Checkpoints has announced its most recent solution called CloudGuard to address this issue. CloudGuard has the versatility of being deployed in either an IaaS or a SaaS based cloud environment. It also is vendor agnostic and can be deployed across any public or private cloud-based service. CloudGuard is based on CheckPoint's infinity architecture and provides 5th generation level protection that stands up against even Zero-day based attacks. CloudGuard is also easily managed through a unified management solution making east-west and north-south traffic visible and controllable. The combination of 5th generation protection and easy management provides elevated security through simplicity.