Phase 1: Understand cloud usage and risk
The first step in cloud security is to consider your current state and assess the risks. Using cloud security solutions that enable cloud monitoring, you can take the following steps:
Step 1: Identify sensitive or controlled data.
The most significant risk area is data loss or theft, resulting in penalties or loss of intellectual property. Data classification engines can classify your data so you can fully measure this risk.
Step 2: Understand how subtle data is accessed and transferred.
Sensitive data can be stored in the cloud, but you must track who can access it and where it goes. View permissions for files and folders in your cloud environment, including access contexts such as user roles, location, and device type.
Step 3: Discover Shadow IT (unknown uses of the cloud).
Most people don’t ask their IT team before ratification up for a cloud storage account or changing a PDF online. Use your network proxy, firewall, or SIEM logs to find out what cloud services exist that you don’t know about, and then assess their risk profile.
Step 4: Audit infrastructure (IaaS) configurations like AWS before Azure.
Your IaaS settings cover many dangerous locations, several of which can create exploitable vulnerabilities if not configured correctly. Start by auditing your identity and access management configurations, network configuration, and encryption.
Step 5: Detect malicious user behavior.
Unwary employees and third-party attackers can exhibit behavior that indicates malicious use of cloud data. User behavior analytics (UBA) can monitor anomalies and reduce internal and external data loss.
Phase 2: Protect your cloud
Once you understand the level of cloud security risk, you can strategically apply security to your cloud services based on their risk level. Several cloud security skills can help you implement the following best practices:
Step 1: Apply data protection policies.
Because your data is now classified as sensitive or controlled, you can assign policies that switch what data can be stored in the cloud, seclude or remove subtle data found in the cloud, and inform users when they have made an error and violated one of your rules.
Step 2: Encrypt sensitive data with your keys.
The encryption in the cloud service will protect your data from unauthorized parties, but the worker will still have contact with your encryption keys. Instead, encode your data with your keys so you have complete access control. Users can still access data seamlessly.
Step 3: Set limits on data sharing.
From the moment data reaches the cloud, enforce access control policies on one or more services. Start with setting up users or groups in the viewer or editor and controlling what information can be shared externally through shared links.
Step 4: Stop transferring data to unmanaged devices you don’t know about.
Cloud services provide access from anywhere there is an Internet connection, but access from unmanaged plans such as a personal phone creates a blind spot for your security—block downloads on unmanaged devices by requiring a device security check before downloading.
Step 5: Apply advanced malware protection to an infrastructure through a service (IaaS) such as AWS or Azure.
In IaaS environments, you are accountable for the security of your working systems, applications, and network traffic. Anti-malware technology can be applied to the OS and virtual network to protect your infrastructure. Deploy applications allow listing and memory feat deterrence for single-purpose workloads and machine learning-based defense for general-purpose assignments and file stores.
Phase 3: Respond to cloud security issues
When accessing and using your cloud services, incidents that require an automated or managed response will regularly arise, just like in any other IT environment. Follow these best practices to get started with cloud security incident response:
Step 1: High-access risk situations will require additional verification.
For example, if a user accesses sensitive data in a cloud facility from a new device, two-factor authentication is automatically required to confirm their individuality.
Step 2: Adjust cloud access policies as novel services become available.
You can’t predict which cloud service will be accessed. Still, you can routinely update web access policies, such as those enforced by a safe web gateway, with info about the cloud service’s risk profile to block access or display a warning. Do this by integrating a cloud-based risk database with your secure web gateway or firewall.
Step 3: Remove malware from the cloud service.
Malware can compromise a shared folder that automatically syncs with cloud storage, copying the malware to the cloud without user action. Scan cloud storage files with antivirus software to stop ransomware attacks or data theft.
As cloud services evolve, so do the tests and pressures you face when using them. Always stay updated with updates to your cloud provider’s security-related features so you can adjust your policies accordingly. Security providers will also change their threat intellect and machine learning models to keep up. The steps and best practices outlined above can use several key technologies to complete each step, often working with native security features from cloud providers.
1. Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB):
Protects data in the cloud with data loss prevention, access control, and user behavior analytics. CASB is also used to monitor IaaS configurations and detect shadow IT infrastructures.
2. Protecting cloud workloads:
Discovers workloads and containers, applies malware defense, and simplifies security management in IaaS environments.
3. Virtual network security:
Scans network traffic moving between virtual instances hosted in IaaS environments, including their entry and exit points. READ MORE. computeritblog