Cloud security refers to the set of strategies, technologies, and practices designed to protect data, applications, and services that operate within cloud environments. These environments, which include public, private, hybrid, and multi-cloud architectures, involve shared resources and dynamic infrastructure, creating new security challenges compared to traditional on-premises systems.
Cloud security encompasses a broad range of defensive measures such as identity and access management (IAM), data encryption, threat detection, and network security. Its goal is to safeguard sensitive information, prevent unauthorized access, ensure compliance with regulatory requirements, and protect workloads from potential breaches or attacks.
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services—including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, and analytics—over the internet, commonly referred to as ‘the cloud.’ Instead of owning and maintaining physical data centers or servers, organizations can rent computing resources on-demand from cloud service providers (CSPs) such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud.
These services are typically offered in three primary models:
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Provides virtualized computing resources over the internet.
- Platform as a Service (PaaS): Supplies a platform allowing developers to build, run, and manage applications without dealing with underlying infrastructure.
- Software as a Service (SaaS): Delivers software applications over the internet, typically via a subscription model.
Cloud computing offers flexibility, scalability, and cost-efficiency, but also introduces new security considerations due to the complexity and shared responsibility model between CSPs and customers.
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According to expert analysts’ reports, the top four public cloud security threats are:
- Cloud platform misconfiguration
- Unauthorized access
- Insecure interfaces and APIs
- Privileged account hijacking
In light of these risks, cloud security can provide several important benefits:
- Cloud native capabilities: Cloud security solutions are built to secure cloud native infrastructure such as infrastructure as a service (IaaS) workloads, containers and serverless applications. These new types of resources are difficult to monitor using traditional security tools.
- Improved visibility: Cloud security systems help organizations, first and foremost, understand what exactly is running in their cloud environment, understanding their attack surface, and learning where weaknesses and vulnerabilities lie.
- Centralized security: Cloud security solutions provide central management of security for cloud resources, services, and endpoint devices across multiple clouds. This provides visibility over misconfigurations and security events across complex cloud infrastructure.
- Reduced overhead cost: Cloud security solutions are commonly offered as a service, with fully managed infrastructure. This converts the traditional capital expense of security licenses and specialized hardware to an operating expense, and reduces overheads.
- Managed security services: Many cloud security services not only provide security software, they also provide services like threat intelligence, setup of security rules, monitoring by human experts, and even managed response and remediation of security incidents.
Choosing the Most Effective Cloud Security Solutions For Your Needs
Cloud service providers (CSPs) typically offer standard security, monitoring, and alerting features to help organizations secure their workloads and data in the cloud. However, these tools cannot provide complete coverage, creating additional security gaps. As a result, the attack surface increases and so does the risk of data loss and theft.
Instead of attempting to cover all security aspects—an arguably impossible endeavor—organizations can assess their unique posture and define the security requirements that suit their needs. It often involves assigning risk and sensitivity levels to data and systems and assessing the impact on the organization if the data or systems are compromised.
There are three primary types of cloud environments—public clouds, private clouds and hybrid clouds. These three environments offer different types of security configurations, based on the shared responsibility model. This model defines how resources are utilized, how data moves and where, how connectivity is established, and who takes care of security.
Public Cloud
Public cloud services are hosted by third-party companies like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. While the services offer efficient and cost-effective authentication management and access control, the shared resources model of these services can result in comparatively poor security.
In order to secure your environment, you need to overcome the challenges that come with introducing new security tools. While some tools are available for free, some incur overhead costs. You need to learn how to use the tools or hire an expert to take care of that responsibility. Otherwise, misconfiguration or misuse of the tools can lead to security breaches.
Private Clouds
Private clouds aren’t necessarily safer than public clouds. While public cloud services provide built-in security measures implemented in the service ecosystem, private cloud security falls solely on the in-house team.
Companies that don’t perform regular updates and security maintenance will leave themselves exposed to security vulnerabilities. Additionally, the lack of transparency in some private cloud setups can lead to security issues. For example, software upgrades can create security exploits. Private clouds are especially vulnerable to social engineering attacks and access breaches.
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Products for Managed Private Cloud and Virtual Private Cloud.
Hybrid Clouds
Hybrid clouds combine elements of public and private clouds in one environment. This approach gives companies more control over their data and resources. However, poor network execution, inefficient security protocols, and broken management chains can turn hybrid clouds into easy targets for attacks.
Since hybrid clouds integrate multiple services within one structure, compliance becomes a complex task, because each environment is different, yet needs to follow the same protocols. Each environment that transmits data within the hybrid network is vulnerable to eavesdropping and cyber-attacks. Hybrid clouds with lack of encryption, poor data redundancy, insufficient risk assessment, and data leakage are wide open to attacks.
Multi-Cloud
Multi-cloud is a strategy that enables organizations to deploy workloads across multiple cloud environments, combining private clouds with public clouds such as Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Organizations implementing a multi-cloud strategy can avoid vendor lock-in, improve resiliency, and optimize costs. However, a multi-cloud deployment introduces complexities that may increase the attack surface. It requires a holistic security approach that establishes consistent security controls across several heterogeneous environments.
Cloud systems provide increased access to sensitive data while allowing less control over the network, making them highly vulnerable. Common risks facing cloud-based systems include:
- Data breaches: Many high profile data breaches have been associated with cloud infrastructure. Because cloud resources can be deployed on the open iInternet, insecure resources expose an organization to loss or theft of sensitive data.
- Contractual breaches: Sometimes entities sign a contract specifying the terms for their joint use of data, including access authorization. One example is the transfer of data from local to cloud servers without authorization. Attacks can cause these organizations to violate their contracts and face financial losses or legal liability.
- Data loss: While cloud security doesn’t eliminate all data loss threats, it offers cost-effective and easy solutions for backup and disaster recovery. As opposed to on-premise solutions, cloud environments can store data on multiple cloud data centers and provide added disaster recovery resilience.
- Gaps in compliance: Compliance standards help prevent data breaches by binding organizations into a set of security rules. Unfortunately, there are significant gaps in compliance at many organizations due to the complexity and lack of visibility of cloud environments.
- Hacked interfaces and insecure APIs: APIs and integration points power cloud computing. While APIs help connecting systems, they can also be used as a back door for attackers.
- Malware infections: Cybercriminals can use cloud services as an entry point for data exfiltration, allowing them to hijack systems and accounts, delete data, and harvest identity information and bank details.
- Identity management and weak authentication: Weak identity management gives cybercriminals easy access to credentials and sensitive systems. Cloud authentication security requires managing user identities across different services. Poorly executed identity management can lead to data breaches and access authorization issues.
- Insufficient due diligence and shared vulnerabilities: Transitioning to the cloud without ensuring that the cloud service provider’s security measures operate within the standard best practices, or offer necessary security controls, can lead to massive security breaches and shared vulnerabilities that leave all parties open to attack.
- Abuse and misuse: Cheap infrastructure or pirated software can expose companies to security breaches.
- Data migration complexity and misconfiguration: Cloud migrations, in particular data migrations to and from the cloud, can be complex, and misconfigurations during this process can lead to security vulnerabilities. A lack of understanding or oversight of security settings can leave data exposed.
The architecture of a cloud security system should account for tools, policies and processes needed to safeguard cloud resources against security threats. Among its core principles, it should include:
- Security by design: Cloud architecture design should implement security controls that are not vulnerable to security misconfigurations. For example, if a cloud storage container holds sensitive data, external access should be locked, and there should be no way for an administrator to open access to the public Internet.
- Visibility: Many organizations use multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud deployments that traditional security solutions fail to protect. An effective strategy accounts for both the tools and the processes to maintain visibility throughout an organization’s complete cloud-based infrastructure.
- Unified management: Security teams are often overworked and understaffed, and so cloud security solutions must provide unified management interfaces. Teams must be able to centrally manage a wide range of cloud security solutions through a ‘single pane of glass’.
- Network security: The cloud uses a shared responsibility model, and the organization is responsible for securing traffic flows to and from cloud resources, and between the public cloud and on-premise networks. Segmenting networks is also important to limit an attacker’s ability to move laterally once they have gained access to a network.
- Agility: The cloud fosters development and deployment of new solutions. Security should not inhibit this agility. Organizations can use cloud-native security solutions that integrate seamlessly into the agile development lifecycle.
- Automation: Automation is critical to swift provisioning and updating of security controls in a cloud environment. It can also help identify and remediate misconfigurations and other security gaps in real time.
- Compliance: Regulations and standards like GDPR, CCPA, and PCI/DSS protect both data and processes in the cloud. Organizations can leverage cloud provider solutions, but will often need third-party solutions to manage compliance across multiple cloud providers.
Kubernetes has become a de-facto standard for containerized application management and distributed resource management, especially in cloud environments. It introduces unique security challenges because of its distributed architecture and complexity.
Some of the primary concerns include securing the Kubernetes control plane, managing network policies, and securing communication between services. Kubernetes environments often involve numerous microservices with different permissions and access needs, which can expand the attack surface if not tightly controlled. The platform’s flexibility in managing infrastructure at scale also requires robust identity and access management (IAM) practices to prevent unauthorized access, especially when deployed across public clouds where configurations can be complex and vary by cloud provider.
Cloud providers offer managed Kubernetes services, such as Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), each providing cloud-native security features. These managed Kubernetes options simplify certain security practices, such as automated patching, regular updates, and integration with native cloud security tools. However, they also follow the shared responsibility model, meaning the cloud provider manages the infrastructure’s underlying security, while the organization is responsible for securing workloads, identity, and access within Kubernetes.
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There are several common technologies that help organizations secure their cloud deployments, the main ones being:
Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP)
CWPP is a security solution that can protect cloud workloads by providing visibility into resources across multiple clouds, ensuring they are appropriately deployed, and have the necessary security controls.
CWPP can perform active security tasks such as hardening operating systems and applications, scanning and remediating vulnerabilities, whitelisting applications, and performing integrity checks.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
CSPM reviews cloud environments and detects misconfigurations and risks pertaining to compliance standards. Its main goal is to automate security configuration and provide central control over configurations that have a security or compliance impact.
CSPM is usually delivered as a cloud service. It creates an inventory of cloud resources, enables setting and enforcing enterprise-wide policies, and can scan resources like compute instances, storage buckets, or databases for harmful configuration errors. It can also perform risk assessments according to frameworks like ISO, NIST, and CSI Benchmarks.
Learn more: Secret Management
Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB)
CASB can help detect and control SaaS applications in use by the organization. Common uses are to identify shadow IT (unauthorized use of cloud services), as well as sensitive data being transferred to and from cloud applications. Many organizations use multiple CASB solutions, each supporting the specific APIs or ecosystem of a specific SaaS solution.
CASB solutions include several technologies to ensure network traffic flowing to and from the cloud are in line with security policies: traditional firewalls, web application firewalls (WAF), which can block threats at the application layer, authentication to prevent unauthorized access to content, and data loss prevention (DLP) to detect and prevent data exfiltration.
Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP)
A Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform is an integrated security solution designed specifically to protect cloud-native applications, which are built using microservices, containers, and serverless architectures. Unlike traditional security tools that focus on securing individual components or layers, CNAPP provides a unified approach to securing the entire lifecycle of cloud-native applications—from development to runtime.
CNAPP combines several key security capabilities, including vulnerability management, compliance checks, and runtime protection. It continuously scans cloud environments for vulnerabilities in code, container images, and other resources, helping organizations to identify and fix issues early in the development process. Additionally, CNAPP can enforce security policies across the cloud environment, ensuring that applications are deployed securely and remain compliant with industry standards.
One of the primary benefits of CNAPP is its ability to provide deep visibility and context-aware security across dynamic cloud environments. This includes monitoring for threats at the application layer, detecting anomalous behavior, and protecting workloads from attacks in real-time. By integrating security into the DevOps process, CNAPP helps organizations to achieve a stronger security posture without slowing down the pace of development.
Learn more: What is CNAPP?
Kubernetes Security Posture Management (KSPM)
Kubernetes Security Posture Management is a security solution specifically designed to address the unique challenges of securing Kubernetes environments. As Kubernetes has become the de facto standard for container orchestration, its widespread adoption has introduced new security risks, such as misconfigured pods, insecure access controls, and vulnerabilities in container images.
KSPM tools help organizations maintain a strong security posture by continuously monitoring their Kubernetes clusters, detecting configuration issues, and ensuring compliance with security best practices.
KSPM solutions typically provide features such as cluster inventory, vulnerability scanning, and policy enforcement. They allow security teams to define and enforce security policies that govern Kubernetes resources, ensuring that only compliant configurations are deployed. Additionally, KSPM tools can monitor runtime environments to detect anomalies and potential threats, providing actionable insights to remediate issues before they lead to security incidents.
Learn more: Kubernetes Monitoring: A Practical Guide.
Related product offering: Komodor | Kubernetes Management and Troubleshooting
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eXtended Detection and Response (XDR)
XDR is a holistic security platform that can protect cloud systems as well as on-premise networks, endpoints, and other systems. Its goal is to enable visibility, detection and response for threats, regardless of whether they appear in the IT environment. In the cloud, it integrates with endpoints like compute instances and containers, and can gather data from cloud networks.
XDR can complement other cloud security systems by identifying sophisticated or hidden threats, especially when these threats hide in the interfaces between systems. It can combine data from disparate sources to create a complete attack story—so that events that seem benign in one system can be identified as part of a larger attack.
Learn more: What is XDR?
SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM)
SaaS Security Posture Management provides visibility, monitoring, and assists with remediation of security issues for a portfolio of SaaS applications.
SSPM allows organizations to identify and remediate gaps in SaaS security controls, including misconfiguration and lack of compliance with common protocols and standards like Center for Internet Security (CIS) benchmarks, Service Organization Control 2 (SOC 2), and PCI DSS.
Learn more: Read more about SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM).
Related product offering: Cynet All-In-One Cybersecurity Platform
Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
Managed Detection and Response is a managed service that hunts, detects, and eliminates threats. It can be used to protect cloud and on-premises environments. MDR services typically include endpoint detection and response (EDR) technology and security specialists to operate and maintain them.
MDR security platforms offer organizations the benefits of continuous monitoring with a modern security operations center (SOC) without the overhead or responsibility of maintaining their own SOC. MDR services give organizations security benefits like:
- Advanced analytics
- Threat intelligence
- Human security expertise
- Incident investigation experience
- Incident response experience
Learn more: What is MDR?
Related product offering: Cynet 24x7 Security Center | Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
Cloud Data Security
Cloud data security software implements access controls and security policies for cloud-based storage services across multiple cloud providers. It can protect data stored in the cloud, or transferred to or from cloud-based resources.
Among the key capabilities of cloud data security systems are central management of data encryption, governance, and permissions for sensitive data, as well as data loss prevention (DLP) to detect anomalous activity that could result in loss or exfiltration of sensitive data.
Cloud Monitoring
Cloud monitoring solutions are an essential component of a cloud security strategy. Organizations need continuous monitoring of cloud-based resources, both for visibility—to know what is running, and where—and to identify anomalies which might be security incidents. There are five main types of cloud monitoring:
- Database monitoring: Tracking availability, utilization, performance, and access to cloud-based databases.
- Website monitoring: Tracking users, traffic, performance, and availability of cloud-deployed websites and web applications.
- Virtual network monitoring: Virtual networks are critical to cloud security, and must be monitored at the router, firewall, and load balancer level.
- Cloud storage monitoring: Gaining visibility into how storage is used by applications, databases, services, and compute instances.
- Virtual machine monitoring: Just like you would monitor servers deployed on-premises, it is important to monitor uptime, traffic, and access to compute instances in the cloud.
Cloud Compliance
Cloud compliance software can help organizations ensure that they are meeting their compliance obligations in a cloud environment. It provides visibility over workloads running on public and private clouds, network traffic, and configurations, and reporting which cloud services may be violating specific compliance requirements.
Cloud compliance systems are similar to CWPP, but they are different in that CWPP focuses on controlling security in the cloud environment and enforcing security controls, while cloud compliance solutions are passive tools that can notify about violations, provide remediation instructions, and generate detailed reports and audits.
Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery
Cloud backup is a critical part of an effective cloud security program. It can help protect against threats like ransomware and malware, as well as accidental or malicious tampering or sabotage of cloud assets. Cloud backup allows an organization to send a copy of files or entire systems (such as virtual machines or containers) to a cloud-based location. The copy is stored in a cloud data center and can be restored if the original data is lost.
Cloud backup services typically charge a fee based on the storage space used, data transfer bandwidth, and frequency of access. They can be used to backup both on-premises and cloud-based resources.
Another important function of cloud backup is disaster recovery. Traditionally, disaster recovery involved setting up an entire secondary data center and switching over to it in case of a disaster. This was expensive and out of the reach of smaller organizations. Cloud disaster recovery solutions are an attractive alternative, which lets organizations easily set up replicas of their systems in the cloud, and activate them on demand if a disaster occurs.
Learn more: Dive deeper into Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery.
A cloud native application is software that is designed to run on cloud infrastructure. There are many definitions of cloud native applications, and the term is often used interchangeably with ‘microservices architecture’ (though microservices can be a part of cloud-native applications, they are not exclusive to them).
Cloud native applications are commonly built with the following characteristics:
- Resilient: Cloud native applications applications are distributed and able to deal with failures as a normal occurrence, without downtime or disruption to service.
- Agile: Cloud native applications are developed using automated continuous integration/ continuous delivery (CI/CD) processes, and are made up of small, independent components, each of which can be rapidly developed and updated.
- Operable: Cloud native applications are easy to test, deploy, and operate. They have advanced automation that manages system components at all stages of their lifecycle.
- Observable: Cloud native applications easily expose information about application state, malfunctions, and failures. Each component in the system is responsible for generating meaningful logs to provide insights into its operation.
Best practices you can use to secure cloud native applications include:
Shift Security Left
Cloud native development is fast paced, and relies on automated deployment, whether using container images, infrastructure as code (IaC) templates, or cloud automation mechanisms. This makes it more important to start the security process from the onset of development.
‘Shifting security left’ is an approach that involves integrating security measures early in the development lifecycle. This proactive approach helps in mitigating risks and ensuring a more secure development process. It includes:
- Ongoing Scanning: Continuously scanning container images and cloud infrastructure for vulnerabilities.
- Automated Testing: Automatically testing code for security issues well before it reaches production.
- Identifying Misconfigurations: Automatically detecting misconfigurations and security malpractices, such as missing authentication or hard-coded secrets.
Apply Perimeter Security at the Function and Container Level
Traditional security methods focused on securing the overall network perimeter. In a cloud native environment, there is no network perimeter. Instead, organizations must create micro-perimeters around infrastructure units as follows:
- In a serverless architecture: Protecting each serverless function and paying attention to security of event streams.
- In a containerized architecture: Securing individual containers, pods, clusters, and master nodes of container orchestration.
- When using container platforms: You are responsible for securing worker nodes, while the cloud provider is responsible for securing the Kubernetes control plane.
Learn more: Cloud Containers
Minimal Roles and Privileges
Identity and access management (IAM) plays an important role in cloud security. Use IAM to define permissions on a granular basis for containers or serverless functions. Ensure that each element has the least privileges it needs to perform its activities. Use zero trust principles to ensure that all communications, even between trusted entities, are authenticated and verified.
Secure Open Source and Dependencies
Cloud native applications commonly include open source components, which may include a large number of dependent packages. It is important to scan these components and their dependencies for open source vulnerabilities. This must be automated and integrated into deployment processes so that every component deployed in the cloud native environment is verified to be free of security vulnerabilities.
Shared Responsibility for Security
Cloud native security takes a DevSecOps approach, with close cooperation between developers, operations, and security professionals:
- Developers should be educated in security practices and take responsibility for secure coding practices.
- Operations and DevOps must take into account security practices at all stages of the software development lifecycle (SDLC).
- Security teams must understand development practices and provide relevant advice and guidance for improving security.
Leverage eBPF
eBPF, or extended Berkeley Packet Filter, is a powerful technology that allows programs to run safely and efficiently within the operating system kernel without modifying the kernel source code or loading additional modules. Originally developed for packet filtering, eBPF has evolved to support a wide range of use cases, including networking, observability, and security.
Application developers can use eBPF to add capabilities to the operating system during runtime. The operating system guarantees execution efficiency and security as if it was natively compiled using a ‘Just-In-Time’ (JIT) compiler and verification engine.
Establish a Vulnerability Management Program
Vulnerability management must be a continuous process in cloud native environments. Integrating automated scanning tools into the CI/CD pipeline ensures early detection of vulnerabilities in container images, serverless functions, and code repositories. Patch management should be automated to promptly update or replace vulnerable components with minimal disruption.
Prioritizing vulnerabilities based on severity and risk is crucial for effective remediation. Maintaining an up-to-date inventory of all software components, including open source dependencies, helps track vulnerabilities and ensures targeted remediation. A tracking process is essential to monitor the status of vulnerabilities from detection through to resolution.
Learn more: What is Vulnerability Management?
Utilize a Service Mesh
A service mesh secures communication within cloud native applications by implementing mutual TLS (mTLS), which encrypts and authenticates service-to-service traffic. This prevents unauthorized access and ensures secure data exchange. Service meshes also enforce fine-grained access control policies, limiting service interactions to reduce the attack surface.
Beyond security, service meshes enhance observability by providing detailed metrics, logs, and traces, which help monitor service performance and detect potential threats. They also manage traffic routing and load balancing, ensuring resilience and performance. Additionally, service meshes can simulate faults to test security and operational resilience, helping to identify and address vulnerabilities before they are exploited.
Learn more: Service Mesh: Benefits, Challenges, and 7 Key Concepts
Most organizations operating in the cloud run at least some services on the three major cloud providers: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Each of these cloud providers provides a large ecosystem of infrastructure and services, which includes security tools and best practices.
Before we go into specific best practices for each cloud provider, here are general guidelines to improve security in a public cloud environment:
- Network segmentation: Split networks into segments for improved performance and security. If segmentation is already in place you can assess the resources and leverage a zone approach to isolate systems and components.
- Identity and access management (IAM): This helps reduce security risks such as unauthorized access and account hijacking. High-quality IAM solutions define and enforce access policies, including role permissions and multi-factor authentication. In cloud computing, access control lists (ACLs) are essential for monitoring and recording access.
- Training your staff: Employees are responsible for individual use of company technology and need to understand security risks. Educate staff on strong passwords, identifying dangerous emails and shadow IT. Using unauthorized cloud services without permission can put the company and the employee at risk.
- Implementation of cloud security policies: Establish guidelines that define the level of access of each user, the proper use of each service, which type of data can be stored in the cloud, and the security technologies used.
Learn more: Penetration Testing
- Endpoint security: Secures endpoints and monitors user activity in the cloud environment. You can create a strong defense with intrusion detection, firewalls, access control, and anti-malware.
- Data encryption: Since data is vulnerable to attacks in motion (during transit) and at rest (in storage), encryption provides an important layer of security.
- Audits and penetration testing: Ensures that your security infrastructure remains effective and helps identify points for improvement. Through audits and testing, you can analyze vendors’ capabilities and compliance with your SLA, and make sure that access logs show only authorized personnel.
- Cloud disaster recovery: Protect data by setting up robust backup solutions. Make sure your cloud provider’s standards align with yours for data backup, retention, and recovery policies.
- Plan for compliance: Ensure that you have the expertise and tools to fully comply with relevant regulations and industry standards. Don’t take cloud vendor statements about standards compliance at face value; understand exactly what is required to become compliant in the cloud.
AWS Security Best Practices
- Limit security groups: Security groups limit network access to AWS resources. Make sure that you only enable communication to and from ports and IP ranges that are absolutely necessary for components to function. Amazon provides AWS Config and AWS Firewall Manager services which can automatically configure virtual private cloud (VPC) network policies, and apply WAF rules to resources accessible from the public Internet.
- Automate backup: Backup is an important security practice which can protect against data corruption, accidental deletion, and attacks such as ransomware. The AWS Backup service provides central control over backups in all main Amazon services, including Elastic File Service (EFS), Elastic Block Storage (EBS), DynamoDB, and Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS). Amazon also provides API and CLI access to backup functions.
- Centralize logs: Amazon CloudTrail is a service that records user activity and API calls across AWS services. You can store CloudTrail logs in S3 buckets, along with logs from load balancers, other monitoring services, and your own cloud-native applications. By creating a central log archive, you can analyze and correlate logs across all AWS systems. Additionally, you can use a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system to generate security alerts from this data.
- Isolate Kubernetes Nodes: Another important practice is to isolate Kubernetes nodes, for example when running Kubernetes clusters in Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). Kubernetes is a powerful orchestration tool for managing containerized applications. However, it can also be a potential attack vector if not properly secured. Isolating nodes means segregating them into different security groups or virtual private clouds (VPCs). This reduces the attack surface by limiting the potential impact of a security breach. If one node is compromised, the attacker cannot easily move to other nodes in the network. It is also advised to use network policies to control traffic flow between pods in a Kubernetes cluster.
Learn more: Complete Guide to AWS EKS
Related product offering: Spot Ocean | Kubernetes Infrastructure Management
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- Scan Container Images: Container images can contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited by attackers. Therefore, scanning container images for vulnerabilities is a critical part of securing your AWS environment. A common way to run containers in AWS is using Fargate, a serverless compute engine. It allows you to run containers without having to manage the underlying infrastructure. You can use CloudFormation to automate image scanning for all containers deployed to Amazon Fargate (read the Amazon blog post).
Learn more: AWS Fargate Explained
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Azure Security Best Practices
1. Encrypt your data: Azure offers numerous ways to do so:
- Azure Disk Encryption, with encryption keys stored in Azure Key Vault (AKV), or in your own key repository.
- Encryption at Rest, enabled by default for all Azure storage services, using FIPS 140-2 compliant 256-bit AES encryption.
- Encryption in Transit, with built in data link encryption in and between Azure data centers, and TLS encryption for all communications.
2. Limit data access: Follow these best practices to limit access to sensitive data and resources:
- Always restrict access to Secure Shell (SSH), Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), and similar services in your Network Security Groups configuration, unless absolutely necessary.
- Close all ports that are not actively used by your services or applications.
- Share data or files securely using Azure Information Protection service, which lets you set a security priority for files, mark them as sensitive, and protect them with relevant permissions.
- Use Azure Rights Management (RMS) to define encryption and authorization policies, which remain attached files wherever they are stored, ensuring only authorized users can view them.
3. Identity management: Azure supports zero trust practices and provides advanced identity management. The primary service used for identity management is Azure Active Directory (Azure ID). A few key access control best practices are:
- Use identity as the primary security perimeter.
- Centrally manage identity management.
- Enable single sign-on (SSO).
- Turn on conditional access to all cloud resources.
- Enable automated password management.
- Enforce ongoing multi-factor verification.
- Use role-based access control (RBAC).
- Isolate privileged accounts to lower their exposure.
- Use Azure AD to authenticate any access to storage.
4. Use Just-In-Time (JIT) Virtual Machine Access: JIT access is a method of providing temporary, time-bound access to resources. Azure Security Center’s JIT VM access reduces the attack surface by enabling you to lock down inbound traffic to your Azure VMs. When someone needs to connect to a VM, they request access, and if approved, Security Center automatically configures the NSG rule to allow inbound traffic. After the time window expires, Security Center automatically reconfigures the NSG to deny traffic. This practice not only reduces the potential for unauthorized access but also provides an audit trail of who accessed what and when.
5. Use the Azure Security Center’s Compliance Dashboard and Security Benchmark: This provides a centralized view of our security posture and helps meet industry compliance standards. The dashboard provides insights into compliance status, and offers recommendations on how to improve the compliance score and reduce potential security risks. The Azure Security Benchmark provides a set of high-impact security recommendations following industry best practices. These recommendations go beyond the baseline security policies and are tailored to the specific needs of Azure workloads.
Google Cloud Security Best Practices
- Resource hierarchy: GCP offers a flexible resource hierarchy that lets you define the structure of cloud resources and apply permissions in a granular way. Create a hierarchy using Folders, Teams, Projects and Resources that mimics your organizational structure. Otherwise, follow the structure of your development projects or cloud-based applications.
- Retain admin activity logs: Google provides Admin Activity Logs which are retained for 400 days, and provide insights into a range of services and resources in the Google Cloud environment. Export them or save the logs to Google Cloud Storage if you want to retain them for longer, or for compliance purposes.
- Managing firewalls and unrestricted traffic: Use virtual private cloud (VPC) firewalls to manage network traffic to VPCs, virtual machines, and other Google Cloud resources. Avoid allowing access to broad IP ranges, both for inbound and outbound communications. Google Cloud VPC lets you assign network targets using tags and Service Accounts, which makes it possible to define traffic flows logically. For example, you can specify that a certain front-end service can only connect to VMs using a specific service account.
The Certified Cloud Security Professional certification was created to help standardize the knowledge and skills needed to ensure security in the cloud. This certification was developed by ISC2 and the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), two non-profit organizations dedicated to cloud computing security.
CCSP® is designed to help professionals supplement and modify traditional security approaches to better ensure cloud protection. It does this by helping organizations train security professionals and recognize the level of competence in their current teams. This ensures that professionals understand how to secure the cloud and what tools are most effective.
Any professional in the information security or IT fields can gain a CCSP® certification. Those who most commonly seek one include:
- Systems and security engineers
- Enterprise, system, or security architects
- Security administrators or managers
Why Do You Need a CCSP® Certification?
There are many professional and organizational benefits that can come with getting CCSP certified. The most common benefits include:
- Career advancement
- Validation and authentication of your skills and knowledge in cloud computing and security best practices and requirements
- Maintenance of certification level ensures that you remain up-to-date on best practices and technologies related to to cloud based security
- Access to a community of equally or more highly-skilled security professionals
How to Become a Certified Cloud Security Professional
To gain your CCSP® certification, you need to study for and pass the examination offered by ISC2. This certification is only one of six certifications offered by the organization, but is the only one focused solely on secure cloud computing.
To be eligible for CCSP® certification, you need at least five years of paid experience, including three years in information security, and one year in one or more of six CCSP areas:
- Architecture and design concepts
- Data security
- Platform and infrastructure security
- Application security
- Security operations
- Legal, risk and compliance
Radware provides a comprehensive range of award-winning products and solutions to ensure stringent, effective, and industry-leading cloud security, regardless of the deployed infrastructure in use :
Radware’s Alteon Integrated WAF ensures fast, reliable and secure delivery of mission-critical Web applications and APIs for corporate networks and in the cloud. Recommended by the NSS, certified by ICSA Labs, and PCI compliant, this WAF solution combines positive and negative security models to provide complete protection against web application attacks, access violations, attacks disguised behind CDNs, API manipulations, advanced HTTP attacks (such as slowloris and dynamic floods), brute force attacks on log-in pages, and more.
Cloud WAF
Radware’s Cloud WAF service is part of our Cloud Application Protection Service which includes WAF, API protection, Bot management, Layer-7 DDoS protection and Client-Side Protection. The service analyzes web applications to identify potential threats, then automatically generates granular protection rules to mitigate those threats. It also offers device fingerprinting to help identify bot attacks, AI-powered API discovery and protection to prevent API abuse, full coverage of OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities, and data leak prevention, which prevents the transmission of sensitive data. Radware Cloud WAF is NSS recommended, ICSE Labs certified, and PCI-DSS compliant.
Kubernetes WAF
Radware Kubernetes WAF is a comprehensive and scalable web application firewall designed for CI/CD environments orchestrated by Kubernetes. It provides robust data and application protection, integrating seamlessly with Kubernetes orchestration and common DevOps tools.
The solution offers advanced automation, autoscaling, and elasticity, ensuring security for microservices architectures. It combines both negative (signature-based) and positive security models to protect against known and unknown threats, including zero-day attacks. Additionally, it provides detailed visibility and analytics for DevSecOps teams, reducing total cost of ownership with minimal false positives.
Cloud Application Protection Services
Radware’s Cloud Application Protection Services provide a unified solution for comprehensive web application and API protection, bot management, client-side protection, and application-level DDoS protection. Leveraging Radware SecurePath™, an innovative API-based cloud architecture, it ensures consistent, top-grade security across any cloud environment with centralized visibility and management.
This service protects digital assets and customer data across on-premise, virtual, private, public, and hybrid cloud environments, including Kubernetes. It addresses over 150 known attack vectors, including the OWASP Top 10 Web Application Security Risks, Top 10 API Security Vulnerabilities, and Top 21 Automated Threats to Web Applications. The solution employs a unique positive security model and machine-learning analysis to reduce exposure to zero-day attacks by 99%. Additionally, it distinguishes between “good” and “bad” bots, optimizing bot management policies to enhance user experience and ROI. Radware’s service also ensures reduced latency, no route changes, and no SSL certificate sharing, providing increased uptime and seamless protection as businesses grow and evolve.
Cloud Native Protector
Radware’s Cloud Native Protector provides comprehensive, multi-layered protection for applications, workloads, and infrastructure hosted in public cloud environments like AWS and Azure. This agentless, cloud-native solution is designed to prevent accidental exposure, misconfigurations, and malicious activities.
Key features include Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) for detecting and reporting cloud misconfigurations, Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) for managing and eliminating excessive permissions, and advanced threat detection and response capabilities that continuously monitor for suspicious behavior and automatically block malicious activities. The solution also offers cross-cloud visibility and support, providing a centralized management console with risk-based prioritization of alerts. Additionally, it includes smart permission hardening recommendations to reduce attack surfaces and protect against data theft attempts.
Cloud DDoS Protection Service
Radware’s Cloud DDoS Protection Service offers advanced, multi-layered defense against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. It uses sophisticated behavioral algorithms to detect and mitigate threats at both the network (L3/4) and application (L7) layers. This service provides comprehensive protection for infrastructure, including on-premises data centers and public or private clouds.
Key features include real-time detection and mitigation of volumetric floods, DNS DDoS attacks, and sophisticated application-layer attacks like HTTP/S floods. Additionally, Radware’s solution offers flexible deployment options, such as on-demand, always-on, or hybrid models, and includes a unified management system for detailed attack analysis and mitigation.
Web DDoS Protection
Radware’s Cloud Web DDoS Protection is engineered to counteract sophisticated Layer 7 (L7) DDoS attacks that evade traditional defenses by mimicking legitimate traffic. Utilizing proprietary behavioral-based algorithms, it detects and mitigates high-volume, encrypted attacks in real-time, generating precise signatures on the fly. This solution effectively handles Web DDoS Tsunami attacks, which use techniques like randomizing HTTP headers and cookies, and IP spoofing. It ensures comprehensive protection without disrupting legitimate traffic, minimizing false positives. Additionally, it integrates seamlessly with Radware’s broader Cloud Application Protection Services, offering a holistic defense against a wide range of web-based threats, including zero-day attacks.
Bot Manager
Radware Bot Manager is a multiple award-winning bot management solution designed to protect web applications, mobile apps, and APIs from the latest AI-powered automated threats. Utilizing advanced techniques such as Radware’s patented Intent-based Deep Behavior Analysis (IDBA), semi-supervised machine learning, device fingerprinting, collective bot intelligence, and user behavior modeling, it ensures precise bot detection with minimal false positives. Bot Manager provides AI-based real-time detection and protection against threats such as ATO (account takeover), DDoS, ad and payment fraud, and web scraping.
With a range of mitigation options (like Crypto Challenge), Bot Manager ensures seamless website browsing for legitimate users without relying on CAPTCHAs while effectively thwarting bot attacks. Its AI-powered correlation engine automatically analyzes threat behavior, shares data throughout security modules and blocks bad source IPs, providing complete visibility into each attack. With a scalable infrastructure and a detailed dashboard, Radware Bot Manager delivers real-time insights into bot traffic, helping organizations safeguard sensitive data, maintain user trust, and prevent financial fraud.
Account Takeover (ATO) Protection
Radware Bot Manager protects against Account Takeover attacks, and offers robust protection against unauthorized access to user accounts across web portals, mobile applications, and APIs. The solution provides comprehensive defense against brute force and credential stuffing attacks, and offers flexible bot management options including blocking, CAPTCHA challenges, and feeding fake data.
Client-Side Protection
Radware’s Client-Side Protection solution is designed to secure end users from attacks embedded in the application supply chain, such as Magecart, formjacking, and DOM XSS. It provides continuous visibility into third-party scripts and services running on the browser side of applications, ensuring real-time activity tracking and threat-level assessments. This solution complies with PCI-DSS 4.0 requirements, helping to protect sensitive customer data and maintain organizational reputation. Key features include blocking untrusted destinations and malicious scripts without disrupting legitimate JavaScript services, monitoring HTTP headers and payment pages for manipulation attempts, and providing end-to-end protection against supply chain exploits.
API Protection
Radware’s API Protection solution is designed to safeguard APIs from a wide range of cyber threats, including data theft, data manipulation, and account takeover attacks. This AI-driven solution automatically discovers all API endpoints, including rogue and shadow APIs, and learns their structure and business logic. It then generates tailored security policies to provide real-time detection and mitigation of API attacks. Key benefits include comprehensive coverage against OWASP API Top 10 risks, real-time embedded threat defense, and lower false positives, ensuring accurate protection without disrupting legitimate operations.
Threat Intelligence Service
Radware’s Threat Intelligence Service offers real-time, actionable insights derived from active Layer 3 to Layer 7 cyber-attacks observed in production environments. This service empowers security operation center (SOC) teams, threat researchers, and incident responders by providing enriched, contextual information that enhances threat detection and reduces mean time to response (MTTR). Key features include IP reputation alerts, seamless integration with existing security workflows via a REST API, and the ability to investigate suspicious IP addresses using large, diverse data sets. The service also integrates external data feeds and Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) to provide comprehensive threat visibility.
See Our Additional Guides on Key Cloud Security Topics
Together with our content partners, we have authored in-depth guides on several other topics that can also be useful as you explore the world of cloud security.
SSPM
Authored by Cynet
Learn about SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM), a new security category that helps organizations identify misconfigurations and security issues in SaaS applications and automatically resolve them.
What is MDR
Authored by Cynet
Learn about managed detection and response (MDR), a managed service that can help organizations operate endpoint detection and response (EDR) and related technologies without burdening in-house staff.