Aug 18 2021

The 3 Rs of visibility for any cloud journey

Category: Cloud computing,Information Security — DISC @ 8:54 am
The 3 Rs of visibility for any cloud journey

While Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) solutions help automate and structure these activities, the activities themselves require telemetry data that provide the breadcrumbs to help scope, identify and potentially remedy the situation. This takes increasing significance in the cloud for a few reasons:

  • The public cloud shared security model may lead to gaps in the telemetry (e.g., lack of telemetry from the underlying infrastructure that could help correlate breadcrumbs at the infrastructure level to the application level).
  • Lack of consistency in telemetry information as applications increasingly segment into microservices, containers and Platform-as-a-Service, and as various modules come from different sources such as internal development, open source, commercial modules, and outsourced development.
  • Misconfigurations and misunderstandings as control shifts between DevOps, CloudOps and SecOps.
  • All the above coupled with a significant expansion of attack surface area with the decomposition of monolith applications into microservices.

When incidents occur, the ability to quickly size up the scope, impact and root cause of the incident is directly proportional to the availability of quality data, and its ability to be easily queried, analyzed, and dissected. As companies migrate to the cloud, logs have become the de-facto standard of gathering telemetry.

The challenges when relying almost exclusively on logs for telemetry

This book is designed for security and risk assessment professionals, DevOps engineers, penetration testers, cloud security engineers, and cloud software developers who are interested in learning practical approaches to cloud security. It covers practical strategies for assessing the security and privacy of your cloud infrastructure and applications and shows how to make your cloud infrastructure secure to combat threats, attacks, and prevent data breaches. The chapters are designed with a granular framework, starting with the security concepts, followed by hand-on assessment techniques based on real-world studies, and concluding with recommendations including best practices.

FEATURES:

  • Includes practical strategies for assessing the security and privacy of your cloud infrastructure and applications
  • Covers topics such as cloud architecture and security fundamentals, database and storage security, data privacy, security and risk assessments, controls related to continuous monitoring, and more
  • Presents several case studies revealing how threat actors abuse and exploit cloud environments to spread malware

Tags: cloud computing risks, cloud security

Jul 28 2021

How is Cloud Infrastructure Security Important for an Organization?

Category: Cloud computing — DISC @ 12:16 pm
Top 5 Benefits of Cloud Infrastructure Security 

Embracing new technologies lead to qualitative growth but simultaneously holds high chances of quantitative data breaches. While adopting cloud technology, it is important to see the security of cloud infrastructure as one of the crucial responsibilities. There are various organizations out there that are still unsure of the security of their data present in the cloud environment. 

In 2019, Collection #1, a massive data breach held responsible for compromising data set of over 770 million unique email addresses and 21 million unique passwords. The collection of data files was stored on a cloud storage service and MEGA. Similarly, information of over 108 million bets’ records was leaked by an online casino group. The leaked data included details of customers’ personal information along with deposits and withdrawals.

Then the same year, a famous food delivery service providing firm was breached, compromising the data of 4.9 million users, including consumers and delivery employees.

Additionally, a post from Security Boulevard says acording to a survey almost 98% of the companies had witnessed at least one cloud data breach in the past 18 months,  that is compared to 79% in 2020.

Here are the five major benefits that you gain from cloud infrastructure security solutions:

  • Data Security

Nowadays, cloud computing servers are becoming susceptible to data breaches. Cloud infrastructure security solutions help in ensuring that data like sensitive information and transaction is protected. It also helps in preventing the third party from tampering with the data being transmitted.

  • DDoS Protection 

Distributed denial of service, aka DDoS attacks, is infamously rising and deployed to flood the computer system with requests. As a result, the website slows down to load to a level where it starts crashing when the number of requests exceeds the limit of handling. Cloud computing security provides solutions that focus on stopping bulk traffic that targets the company’s cloud servers. 

  • Constant Support 

When it comes to the best practices of cloud infrastructure security solutions, it offers consistent support and high availability to support the company’s assets. In addition, users get to enjoy the benefit of 27/7 live monitoring all year-round. This live monitoring and constant support offer to secure data effortlessly.

  • Threat Detection

Infrastructure security in the cloud offers advanced threat detection strategies such as endpoint scanning techniques for threats at the device level. The endpoint scanning enhances the security of devices that are accessing your network. 

  • Supervision of Compliance

In order to protect data, the entire infrastructure requires to be working under complaint regulations. Complaint secured cloud computing infrastructure helps in maintaining and managing the safety features of the cloud storage. 

The points mentioned above are clear enough to state how beneficial and vital is cloud infrastructure security for an organization. Unfortunately, there are very many high-profile cases that have been witnessed in past years relating to data breaches. 

To patch the loopholes and strengthen the IT infrastructure security, it is crucial to keep the security of cloud storage services a high priority. Engage with the top-class cloud computing security tools to get better results and have the data secured.

Cloud Security

Tags: cloud computing risks, Cloud Infrastructure Security, cloud security, cloudcomputing

Mar 23 2021

Taking a Security-First Approach to Cloud Migration

Category: Cloud computing — DISC @ 9:22 am
Taking a Security-First Approach to Cloud Migration

The pandemic and lockdowns hit their first anniversary mark, and many companies continue to have their employees work from home for the foreseeable future. Over the past year, organizations have seen how important cloud computing is to business operations.

In fact, according to a MariaDB survey, 40% of respondents said that COVID-19 accelerated their migration to cloud, and IDC found that while cloud spending increased slightly during the early months of the pandemic, other IT-related spending decreased.

If nothing else, 2020 showed organizations the advantages of cloud services. Of course, with more cloud use, there is more cloud risk. With almost all cloud teams working remotely, there has been an uptick in security vulnerabilities and a concern that there are ongoing cloud security issues that have yet to be discovered. Organizations are migrating so quickly to the cloud that security is an afterthought, and that has consequences.

Instead, a new Deloitte study recommended, this move to the cloud should work with cybersecurity as a differentiator to gain consumer trust. “An integrated cloud cyber strategy enables organizations to use security in their transformation in a way that promotes greater consumer trust, especially in today’s digital age,” the report stated. Any migration to the cloud should take a security-first approach.

Why Security First?

With an integrated, security-by-design cloud cybersecurity strategy, organizations can use security in digital transformation as a driver rather than as an afterthought, said Bhavin Barot, a Deloitte risk and financial advisory principal in the cyber and strategic risk practice, in an email interview. Leveraging secure design principles during a digital transformation or cloud migration helps organizations in the following ways, Barot added:

  • Incorporating leading-edge, innovative approaches such as intelligent threat detection.
  • Reducing risks related to technology, insider threats and the supply chain.
  • Elevating the DevSecOps posture for developers and engineers and
  • Establishes a cyber-forward approach that reinforces business objectives, enabling security principles such as zero trust.

Taking a Security-First Approach to Cloud Migration

Tags: cloud computing risks, Cloud Migration, cloud security

Mar 09 2021

How to mitigate security risks as cloud services adoption spikes

Category: Cloud computing — DISC @ 11:49 pm
How to mitigate security risks as cloud services adoption spikes

The challenges of accelerated cloud adoption

The sheer number of organizations moving to the cloud is staggering: we’re seeing 3-5 years-worth of business transformation happening in just months due to the pandemic. As cloud-enabled digital transformation continues to accelerate, there are a variety of concerns.

For example, the visibility of data. Organizations (and users) must assess what controls cloud services providers offer in order to understand the security risks and challenges. If data is stored unencrypted, that implies significant additional risk in a multi-tenant environment. Or what about the ability of security models to mimic dynamic behavior? Many anomaly detection and predictive “risk-scoring” algorithms look for abnormal user behavior to help identify security threats. With the sudden and dramatic shift to remote work last year, most models require significant adjustments and adaptation.

Normally, companies begin exploring the move to a cloud service provider with a detailed risk analysis assessment. This often involves examining assets, potential vulnerabilities, exploitation probabilities, anticipated breach-driven outcomes, and an in-depth evaluation of vendors’ capacity to effectively manage a hybrid solution (including authentication services, authorization, access controls, encryption capabilities, logging, incident response, reliability and uptime, etc.).

How to mitigate security risks as cloud services adoption spikes

Tags: cloud computing risks, cloud computing security, cloud security

Jan 22 2010

How to manage risk in the cloud

Category: Cloud computing — DISC @ 3:06 am

What is Cloud Computing and does it provide more protection to your business?

  • Pre-order the Softcover;

  • Pre-order the eBook.

    • Cloud Computing will bring many benefits to organisations, some of which include reducing operating costs, reducing power consumption and freeing you up to focus on your core business.
    The concept of shifting computing to a shared service provider is not new. What may be new is that the cost of Cloud Computing is falling so dramatically that considering outsourcing to the Cloud is no longer rare, and it is now accessible enough that any individual or organisation can use it to their advantage.

    Above the Clouds: Managing Risk in the World of Cloud Computing
    For Cloud Computing to be a viable option, you need to be confident that your business information will be secure and that the service you offer to your customers will still be reliable. So if you want to adopt a Cloud Computing strategy, you need to make sure you carry out due diligence on the service provider before you entrust this firm with your vital data. However, the author challenges the assumption that Cloud Computing will offer less protection to your data than relying on an in-house server. Buy Now!>

    Cloud Computing not only allows you to make economies of scale; it can also offer you the increased security that comes from sharing the resource. The author argues that moving over to Cloud Computing can actually help to defend your organisation from threats such as denial of service attacks, viruses and worms.

    Cloud service providers will tell you that Cloud Computing is bound to be better, faster and cheaper. The reality is that before switching over to Cloud Computing, you need to think carefully about whether it will really work for your business. This book shows you what you need to do to ensure that with Cloud Computing you will continue to give the standard of service your customers require. It also offers you some valuable tips on how to choose your provider of Cloud services.

    Published date: 9th February 2010.

    Pre-order this book using Voucher Code: “cloud2010” to save 10%!

  • Pre-order the Softcover;

  • Pre-order the eBook.

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    Tags: Business, cloud, Cloud computing, cloud computing benefits, cloud computing concerns, cloud computing risks, cloud computing security, cloud security, cloud services, cloudcomputing, Computer Science, Denial-of-service attack, Distributed Computing, due diligence, Economy of scale, Outsourcing, Security

    Jul 07 2009

    Cloud Computing Pros and Cons

    Category: Cloud computing — DISC @ 6:19 pm

    Cloud Application Architectures: Building Applications and Infrastructure in the Cloud

    Cloud computing is the future of the computing, which happens to provide common business applications online that run from web browser and is comprised of virtual servers located over the internet. Basic idea behind cloud computing is the accessibility of application and data from any location as long as you are connected to the internet. Cloud computing makes the laptop the most essential tool to get the job done.

    For example Hosted Email (SaaS) Security provides safeguards at the Internet level, eliminating spam and malware before they reach your internal network infrastructure. The hosted email provides centralized security with built-in redundancy, failover, and business continuity, while easing network and security administration. In the hosted email software as a service the security controls are at work at the internet level. It’s about time to expand the corporate perimeter beyond firewall and one of the major benefit of cloud computing is to give organizations capability to implement security controls at internet level and eliminate threats before they reach the internal network.

    An online backup service is another example of software as a service (SaaS) which provides users with an online system for backing up and storing computer files.

    Cloud computing incorporates several different types of computing, including:
     software as a service (SaaS)
     platform as a service (PaaS)
     infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

    It is a range of technologies that have come together to deliver scalable, tailored and virtualized IT resources and applications over the Internet.

    Cloud Computing have several benefits and potential risks which you may want to know before signing a contract with a cloud vendor.



    Cloud Computing benefits

  • Users can avoid capital expenditure on hardware, software, and other peripheral services, when they only pay a provider for those utilities they use;

  • Consumption is billed as a utility or subscription with little or no upfront cost;

  • Immediate access to a broad range of applications, that may otherwise be out of reach, due to:

  • The lowering barriers to entry;

  • Shared infrastructure, and therefore lower costs;

  • Lower management overhead.

  • Users will have the option to terminate a contract at any time, avoiding return on investment risk and uncertainty.

  • Greater flexibility and availability of ‘shared’ information, enabling collaboration from anywhere in the world – with an internet connection.


    • Cloud computing associated risks

  • Cloud computing does not allow users to physically possess the storage of their data which leaves responsibility of data storage and control in the hands of their provider;

  • Cloud Computing could limit the freedom of users and make them dependent on the cloud computing provider;

  • Privileged user access – how do you control who has access to what information?

  • Security of sensitive and personal information lay with the vendor. How do you explain this to your customers when their data is compromised without sounding like you’re ‘passing the buck’?

  • From a business continuity stand point, can you rely on each vendor to have adequate resilience arrangements in place?

  • Long-term viability — ask what will happen to data if the company goes out of business; how will data be returned and in what format?



    • Complexities of cloud computing will introduce new risks and complexity is the enemy of security. The organizations and end users should be mindful of this security principle before introducing this new variable into their risk equation. As a consumer you need to watch out and research your potential risks before buying this service and consider getting a comprehensive security assessment from a neutral third party before committing to a cloud vendor.

    Recomended books on cloud computing

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    Tags: Cloud computing, cloud computing article, cloud computing benefits, cloud computing concerns, cloud computing email, cloud computing hosting, cloud computing information, cloud computing network, cloud computing platform, cloud computing risks, cloud computing security, cloud computing services, cloud computing solutions, cloud security, cloud services, Infrastructure as a service, Platform as a service