By Venkatesh Sundar, Founder and President, Americas, Indusface
The need for digital scalability and making optimum use of cloud infrastructure for various functional needs is increasingly pushing companies toward adopting multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments. The expanding digital footprint is undoubtedly essential, but it has also meant greater exposure of business data and applications to hackers and cyber criminals. Companies are on a perennial battle to protect sensitive data, safeguard their customers’ interests, and operate with integrity and trust. That’s where it is important that organizations adopt a holistic, centralized and integrated cybersecurity framework instead of letting different departments such as marketing, finance, IT, and operations work in silos.
Dealing with the complexities of multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments
Any typical multi-cloud environment would integrate various private and public cloud services from different CSPs. Even when every cloud player understands the importance of cybersecurity, and takes steps to mitigate risks, complexities are unavoidable when multi-cloud approach is taken. Today, here are multiple cloud service providers with a diversity of networking protocols, security controls, and security policies. For instance, Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure have their own security tools and protocols, and login windows to manage cybersecurity on each platform. As an end-user leveraging these and other cloud services, it would naturally become complex to continually manage each of these cloud deployments, the cybersecurity tools and to ensure complete visibility of each silo. Further, with rules and responsibilities of each CSP being different, the user organization might encounter a scenario where one CSP takes care of a specific security measure by default whereas another requires the users to take care of it. This might leave an organization blind-sided about certain aspect of cybersecurity and cause complications down the line.
Further, multi-cloud/hybrid cloud implies separate windows to manage each deployment, and there could be scenarios where different application development teams might build new applications for quick deployment and the security teams might not be aware of it. For instance, the marketing team might make changes to an application or launch a new app for a promotion campaign planned around a festival, or the finance team might start using a new third-party tool for its operations, without running the updates with the security team or getting the new application listed among inventory and vetted for safety. Such siloed development of applications and management of data storage and security can lead to misconfigurations, lack of visibility, gaps in security controls and other undetected vulnerabilities that bots and other AI-powered malicious tools can exploit.
In such scenarios, it is important that the various cloud deployments are brought under the control of a centralized security team and command centre, but also managed through a single dashboard or single pane visibility. Whether it is data protection, or application security, such a centralized approach would enable the user organizations to effectively address vulnerabilities, maintain complete visibility and to identify and act against emerging security threats.
There are AI-powered security tools such as WAFs available in the market today that can help organizations achieve this objective. Further, the AI-tools are able to monitor all the cloud deployments 24×7, and manage them through a single window pane. Threat detection, raising alerts, finding vulnerabilities and fixing them through virtual patching, preventing DDoS attacks, and many other such cybersecurity capabilities are offered by these advanced tools. The modern AI-powered cybersecurity tools are not only holistic, but also extremely agile. A truly integrated web application security and compliance solution that can detect application layer vulnerabilities accurately, patch them instantly without any code change, and continuously monitor for emerging threats and DDoS attacks to mitigate them. Such a system should also include managed service support 24×7 to perform pen-testing, create custom rules, and maintain zero-false positives.
Doing away with the Silos
As is evident, any cybersecurity framework can be consistently successful when it is agile, managed in a uniform and unified manner through single-window visibility. From a technological perspective, deploying advanced AI-powered firewalls, intrusion detection systems, IAM systems, and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools have become essential to ensure real-time safety. However, all these tools can be effectively leveraged when the user organization is well-versed with the security needs, responsibilities and support offered by each of the CSPs that they wish to integrate in their multi-cloud/hybrid cloud framework. Understanding of the variations across CSPs, the needs and challenges of the organization, and building a holistic single-window management framework for all cybersecurity needs across different clouds as well as on-premise infrastructure is the best and most effective approach to cybersecurity in the digital arena. Investing in continuous cybersecurity training and awareness programmes for their workforce is another key step towards remaining a step ahead of people with malicious intent.
Conclusion
Cybersecurity in the multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environment requires a tactical shift. Understanding the differences in cloud security postures across vendors and breaking the siloed approach to cybersecurity are crucial steps in building a comprehensive as well as cohesive security strategy. By utilizing a single window dashboard, organizations can streamline and standardize their security management across different cloud platforms, effectively protect data, maintain compliance and ensure integrity of the operations at all times!