Keeping the wolves at bay in the cloud

If you are working in the cloud, then appropriately securing your environment must be a top priority. There are a variety of resources readily available to help you think about and deploy a defense in depth strategy. If you are new to the cloud then I would suggest adding the following to your resource list:

Cloud Security Alliance - Good overview information and the Cloud Controls Matrix is great reference when looking at controls for cloud solutions.

Cloud Provider Security Blogs: Both AWS and Microsoft have dedicated blogs focused on cloud security. This is a fast moving area so I recommend putting them on your weekly reading list.

When you build out your environment make sure you look at the reference architectures that both Microsoft (and here) and AWS (includes PCI and NIST examples) have published. Starting from one of these models should help eliminate some internal debates and risk.

The Center for Internet Security (CIS) published the CIS AWS Foundations Benchmark, a set of security configuration best practices for Amazon Web Services (AWS). This is a great reference point to use when looking at your cloud security implementation. Although specific to AWS, you can map the concepts pretty easily to Azure as well. Even better, AWSLabs has a GitHub repository with sample alerts and Lamda functions that you can use to quickly take and apply the best practices in your environment. The security center has a good set of resources as well.

If Azure is your focus, make sure that you are taking a hard look at leveraging Azure Security Center. Trend Micro's blog has some good guidance. If you are deploying PaaS Services, then you should take a look at Azure Platform as a Service (PaaS) Security Best Practices. (Note 3/9 - Msft just launched a new Azure Architecture  Center here)

If servers are cattle, then you have to guard them like sheep. But don't do it the old fashion way. Think about SecDevOps and automation for your security architecture. A little code will go a long way in helping keep the wolves at bay.