Why Cloud Security Is Important
Organizations are relying more and more on cloud platforms such as Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure to run their business-critical applications and manage their data and files.
While the cloud service providers take over some cloud security tasks, their customers (you) retain responsibility for protecting end user data, applications, operating systems, endpoints, and network traffic. And just as with on-premises applications, you must monitor user and system activity to detect attacks. In addition, cloud platforms introduce new complications for security, such as:
- Complex and often flawed configurations of cloud security solutions and tools
- DevOps processes that deploy application code daily or even hourly
- Security information “silos” that make it difficult to identify and respond to attacks
- Attacks that focus on cloud platforms
Below are some cloud security best practices to help address these concerns, as well as the risk of data breaches and compliance violations within cloud environments. To learn about securing specific cloud environments, check out our AWS and Azure resources.
Cloud Vulnerability Management
It is difficult enough to uncover vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in on-premises data centers. It is even harder on dynamic cloud platforms, where assets such as virtual machines appear and disappear at a rate that’s difficult for traditional vulnerability management tools (not to mention security and IT teams) to track.
To protect your data in the cloud, you need a managed cloud security solution that continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in cloud networks. This solution must be able to discover and assess assets as soon as they are spun up in virtual machines and containers, verify compliance with policies and regulations, and calculate risk scores to help you prioritize vulnerabilities. It's also critical to have the power to organize cloud-based assets into dynamic groups and assess them selectively, and to then create custom reports on vulnerabilities and assets that will satisfy your operations teams and auditors.
Cognitive Scale Securely Advances AI with AWS and Rapid7
See how Cognitive Scale relies on Rapid7 InsightVM for peace of mind that they have a complete picture of their AWS environment and any potential risks.
Avoid Security Issues in Dynamic Web Applications with Cloud Network Security
To speed up the delivery of new application features, application development teams are leveraging continuous deployment tools and processes. But automation and fast development cycles can date security testing tools designed for less dynamic environments. Today’s dynamic application security testing (DAST) solutions uncover OWASP Top 10 and many more common vulnerabilities in web applications.
For cloud-based applications, DAST solutions can be integrated with automation and DevOps tools like Jenkins and Azure DevOps Pipelines to trigger security testing at specific milestones in the development process or at every code commit. This allows development and security teams to “shift left” by finding and fixing vulnerabilities early in the software development lifecycle (SDLC) when they are less costly to fix, and to prevent code with vulnerabilities from being put into production. DAST tools can also generate reports that help document the compliance of cloud-based applications with PCI DSS, HIPAA, and many other regulations and industry standards.
Learn more about DAST capabilities for cloud-based applications >
Detect Advanced Threats Across Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Environments
More and more organizations are moving to hybrid and multi-cloud architectures. To detect threats in these complex environments, it’s essential to break down security information silos and employ advanced analytics. The key is deploying a SIEM that can collect, normalize, enrich, and analyze data from on-premises networks, remote endpoints, and cloud platforms such as AWS and Azure.
A SIEM designed for cloud environments can integrate with native AWS services such as AWS CloudWatch, AWS CloudTrail, and AWS GuardDuty, and with native Azure services such as Azure Active Directory, Azure Monitor, and Azure Security Center. This allows it to collect critical log and activity data from cloud infrastructure and applications.
An optimal SIEM should then be able to enrich this data with information gathered from the corporate network and utilize User Behavior Analytics (UBA) to detect anomalous activities indicating compromised credentials, as well as Attacker Behavior Analytics (ABA) to identify activity patterns typical of data breaches.
Organizations utilizing IaaS and PaaS platforms need to be especially vigilant for attackers capturing administrative credentials, taking control of cloud platform consoles, and appropriating resources for cryptojacking, hosting botnets, and other illicit purposes. Detecting these activities requires a SIEM that can gather a wide range of data from cloud platforms and quickly flag the use of new cloud regions, services, or compute instance types.
Learn more about detecting compromised users and lateral movement in a SIEM solution >
Learn more about our SIEM designed for cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments >
Speed up Analysis and Response with SOAR
Everything changes quickly in the cloud. To keep pace, security teams need to speed up data collection and analysis, alerting, and workflows to block attackers and remediate vulnerabilities.
For example, a security orchestration and automation solution can integrate with cloud services to accelerate tasks such as:
- Onboarding new employees and de-provisioning departing ones
- Immediately disabling users when suspicious activity from their accounts is detected, and quickly re-enabling them when the threat has been mitigated
- Collecting and analyzing data to investigate email phishing campaigns
Cloud Risk Complete from Rapid7 helps you reduce risk across all of your dynamic cloud environments. A practitioner-first approach built on consolidation, optimization, and automation, this all-in-one solution leverages continuous security and compliance to reduce workload risk – all without the need for added costs.