Nov 26 2024

Secure Your Digital Transformation with ISO 27001

Category: Cloud computing,ISO 27k — disc7 @ 10:25 am

Secure Your Digital Transformation in Cloud with ISO 27001

In today’s fast-paced digital transformation era, cloud computing drives innovation, scalability, and global competitiveness. But with these opportunities come critical responsibilities—especially in protecting sensitive data.

Enter ISO 27001: the globally recognized standard for information security management. For organizations adopting cloud solutions, ISO 27001 provides a structured roadmap to safeguard data, build trust, and ensure compliance.

Why ISO 27001 is Essential in the Cloud Era

While cloud computing offers flexibility, it also introduces risks. ISO 27001 addresses these challenges by:

  • Adopting a Risk-Based Approach: Identifying and mitigating cloud-specific risks like breaches and misconfigurations. ISO 27001 Risk Management
  • Establishing Clear Policies: Developing tailored security controls for cloud environments.
  • Enhancing Vendor Management: Ensuring third-party agreements align with security objectives.
  • Strengthening Incident Response: Promoting readiness for potential cloud threats or breaches.

ISO 27001 + Digital Transformation = Success

When integrated into your digital strategy, ISO 27001 helps you:

  • Build Trust: Demonstrate commitment to security to customers, partners, and regulators.
  • Simplify Compliance: Align with GDPR, HIPAA, and other regulations.
  • Enable Secure Scalability: Grow your operations without compromising security or agility.

Elevate Your Cloud Security Strategy

Embracing ISO 27001 ensures you not only mitigate cloud risks but also gain a competitive edge. Certification showcases your dedication to safeguarding client data, fostering trust and long-term partnerships.

How secure is your cloud strategy? Let’s discuss how ISO 27001 can help you enhance your security while accelerating your digital transformation goals.

Contact us to explore how we can turn security challenges into strategic advantages.

In the 2022 update, ISO 27001 introduces specific Cloud controls (Annex A, clause 5.23 – the control that specifies the processes for acquiring, using, managing, and exiting cloud services), highlighting key areas where organizations can tighten security:

  • Defining security requirements using the CIA Triad
  • Establishing supplier selection criteria based on your risk profile and needs
  • Assigning and tracking roles and responsibilities (Governance) for Cloud security
  • Ensuring data protection and privacy throughout operations
  • Implementing procurement lifecycle policies for Cloud services, from acquisition to termination

Given today’s reliance on Cloud services—and the risks posed by issues like faulty vendor updates—it’s critical to go deeper into Cloud security controls.

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Tags: Digital Transformation, Securing Cloud Services

May 01 2023

Using just-in-time access to reduce cloud security risk

Category: Cloud computing — DISC @ 9:08 am
Using just-in-time access to reduce cloud security risk

Cloud environments rely on identity as the security perimeter, and identities are mushrooming and making “identity sprawl” a serious challenge. Users often have multiple identities that span many resources and devices, while machine identities —used by apps, connected devices and other services—are growing at an accelerated pace.

This becomes a problem if an attacker manages to compromise an identity, allowing them to gain a foothold in the environment and exploit those privileges to move laterally throughout the cloud environment — or even escalate permissions to do even more damage across many other assets and resources.

One way to address the large attack surface and unnecessary risk in the cloud is to implement just-in-time (JIT) privileged access. This approach limits the amount of time an identity is granted privileged access before they are revoked. Even if an attacker compromises credentials, it may only have privileged access temporarily or not at all. This is a critical defense mechanism.

Simply put, JIT grants privileged access only temporarily and revokes it once the related task is completed. JIT builds on a least-privilege framework to include a time factor, so users only have access to those resources they need to carry out their functions, and only while they are performing those functions. That said, excessive privileges should, by default, be eliminated wherever possible.

“Right-sizing permissions” has become a buzzword for security professionals, but it’s a challenge. Enforcing the kind of granular permissions management necessary for good cloud security manually—going back and forth trying to determine which privileges are called for and what are the minimal escalations that can get the job done — can be time-consuming and frustrating for both users and security teams.

Organizations have reason to worry. As the annual Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report notes time and again: credentials can be the weak link in any network. The most recent report noted the use of stolen credentials has grown about 30% in the last five years. Since a large share of breaches can be traced back to credential theft and abuse, limiting the potential scope of account compromise will have an outsized effect on improving security.

How to implement JIT access

Deploying JIT access begins with gaining a clear view of who users are, what privileges they have and what privileges they need, including whether they are human and machine identities. Is the user an engineer or developer, an administrator or security staff?
Work can’t stop while a user waits to be validated. This is where automation can provide a workable system to provision temporary privileges and revoke them once they’re not necessary.

A few best practices can help security teams implement automated JIT:

  • A self-service portal: Security staff get a bad rap as creators of user friction, so any tool that can smooth out workflows is a good thing. A self-service portal can reduce friction by allowing users to request elevated privileges and tracking the approval process. This cuts back on delays and requests that fall through the cracks, while also enabling automated permissions management, which in turn reduces cloud attack surface and leads an audit trail for monitoring activity.
  • Automate policies for low-risk requests: Simple requests involving low-risk activity, such as work in non-production environments, can be automated with policies that approve requests for a limited time and without human intervention.
  • Define owners for each step of the process: Automation should not equal relinquishing control of business processes. It needs to be monitored to ensure unintended actions do not occur. Each step of the process —reviewing requests, monitoring implementation, and revoking privileges—must be assigned an owner and more complex and sensitive requests should be reviewed and approved by a human, when necessary.

By implementing JIT, security teams can move closer to achieving a least-privilege model and implementing zero trust security. Automation can make this possible by speeding up the process of granting and revoking permissions as necessary, without creating more work for security teams that are already stretched thin, or friction for users that impacts their agility and efficiency.

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Tags: cloud security risk, Securing Cloud Services