What is Cloud Security?

Cloud security definition

Cloud security, also called cloud computing security, is the combination of tools, technologies, processes, and controls that protect an organization’s cloud infrastructure, assets, and data. It keeps business-critical data secure from external and internal threats, such as malicious or negligent behavior.

Migrating to the cloud enables organizations to provide access to data, assets, workloads, and applications to remote employees, third-party contractors or business partners, and customers. But organizations must be mindful of the unique challenges that using the cloud brings.

Cloud security is different from on-premises controls due to offsite data storage, scaling as cloud usage grows, and how different end users connect and collaborate. Focusing on preventing data loss, data exfiltration, and service disruption is important as potential exposure opportunities increase.

Cloud security measures include:

• Implement strong identity and access management (IAM) policies and controls.
• Adopt zero trust to verify all access requests are legitimate and limit lateral movement.
• Maintain compliance with the different regulatory standards, such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, and GDPR.
• Deploy detection and response tools to discover and remediate potential threats before they become a data breach.
• Protect data from exfiltration, exposure, and threats with encryption and other data security methods.
• Perform security posture management to stay atop misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and other risks.

Why cloud security is important

Nearly all organizations use the cloud in some form now, whether that’s a few software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications or hosting all data and applications in the public cloud provided by third-party cloud service providers (CSP), like Google Cloud, Amazon AWS,  Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, and Oracle Cloud.

Cloud security isn’t a nice-to-have, but a must-have for organizations. Reasons why cloud security is important include:

• Protecting data: With business-critical data in the cloud, organizations must keep it secure at all times, whether in use or in storage.
• Discovering misconfigurations: The complexity of the cloud increases the chance that ports are open and S3 buckets are accidentally left accessible externally. It’s integral to be able to discover and remediate those issues quickly.
• Preventing data loss: Through implementation of data backup and recovery solutions, cloud security ensures data isn’t lost from a disaster, data breach, or ransomware attack.
• Encrypting data: Whether at rest or in transit, data must be protected from unauthorized access. Cloud encryption ensures only those with the decryption key can access data.
• Following regulatory compliance: Staying compliant is fairly straightforward on premises, but moving data to the cloud requires rethinking regulatory compliance efforts.
• Securing collaboration efforts: The cloud enables a variety of end users to utilize data and assets, but strong access controls are a must to prevent data exposure or data breaches.
• Performing threat detection: Threats can come from everywhere and it’s important to be able to discover and remediate, or mitigate, them before they turn into a data breach or cyberattack.
• Discovering insider threats: Internal threats, either from negligence or maliciousness, need to be identified and mitigated with assets now accessible outside the traditional security perimeter.
• Securing remote access: As companies allow for employees to work remotely, they need security controls and technologies that can accommodate that effectively, from using VPNs and secure access gateways to strong IAM policies.

Benefits of cloud security

Cloud security provides numerous benefits, such as centralized security, reduced administration, and real-time, continuous protection.

Other cloud security benefits include:

• Strong data protection: Cloud security measures like encryption and access controls limit unauthorized and inappropriate access to data without restricting collaboration.
• Advanced threat protection: Many cloud security tools or platforms detect and mitigate threats quickly and provide automation so as to not overburden security teams.
• Improved data monitoring: Cloud security tools help identify exposures, misconfigurations, and sensitive data locations so data isn’t forgotten or overlooked as containers or virtual machines get spun up. 
• Lower IT costs: Reduces the need for on-premises security controls and infrastructure.
• Better disaster recovery: By securely storing data in the cloud, organizations can more quickly recover from data breaches, natural disasters, and other business continuity crises.

Challenges of cloud security

Cloud security is not without its challenges, especially as organizations develop into complex multi-cloud or hybrid environments.

Some cloud security challenges are:

• Increased attack surface: Expanding beyond the traditional perimeter, especially if assets, workloads, and data exist in multi-cloud environments, increases the potential attack vectors that threat actors can target.
• Potential for cloud sprawl: Scaling up cloud usage and workloads is easy, but if it’s not done with security in mind, keeping sensitive data protected becomes much more difficult as containers get forgotten.
• Shadow IT: Employees want to work their way, even when it goes against security policies. Already a problem on premises, cloud environments increase this issue as SaaS app usage grows beyond IT’s control and what policies dictate.
• Securing multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments: Protecting data and assets in more complex deployments can be difficult and resource intensive.
• Misconfigurations: Teams want to move fast and be agile, but that could mean mistakes are made and ports, buckets, and access controls are ignored, providing an opportunity for data exposure or cyberattacks.
• Complicated compliance and governance: Maintaining compliance standards while rapidly growing in the cloud can prove to be an expensive mistake if not done properly.

Do Cloud Security the Right Way

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What do I need for effective cloud security?

To properly keep assets, systems, infrastructure, and applications secure in the cloud, organizations need to implement the following technologies:

• Identity: Authenticate and authorize human and non-human identities before allowing access to assets and data.
• Network security: Use cloud network security to implement zero trust, microsegmentation, and continuous monitoring.
• Monitoring: Discover, identify, and mitigate potential threats or suspicious cloud activity.
• Application security: Protect applications and APIs from threats and misconfigurations.
• Data security: Secure data from exfiltration and breaches, whether it is in use, at rest, or in transit.
• Incident response: Implement response playbooks to quickly respond and mitigate, or prevent, data breaches or other cyberattacks.
• Governance and compliance: Follow industry regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA, to keep sensitive data secure and to prevent financial penalties.

Types of cloud security tools and technology

Organizations have a wide variety of options when it comes to cloud security tool adoption. Some focus on improving the security posture, while others help to secure workloads or provide security across the entire cloud.

Top cloud security tools on the market include:

• Cloud security posture management: CSPM tools help to continuously monitor, identify, and remediate security risks and cloud misconfigurations. It’s often part of the shift-left movement to include security earlier in the software development lifecycle.
• Cloud workload protection platform: CWPPs provide automated real-time security for workloads, both on-premises and in hybrid cloud infrastructure. It also protects workloads in containerized and virtual environments.
• Cloud access security broker: CASB is an on-premises or cloud-based security tool used to enforce granular IAM policies. It enables organizations to implement a flexible and agile security policy enforcement around cloud security access.
• Data loss prevention: DLP helps protect data from exfiltration, unauthorized access, and destruction. These solutions secure cloud data from insider threats, data breaches, and data exposure.
• Intrusion detection system: IDS helps monitor network traffic for known threats and alerts security teams when suspicious behavior occurs.
• Identity and access management: IAM tools enforce authentication and authorization policies, including step-up authentication as users request access to more sensitive data or privilege escalation attempts.
• Cloud detection and response: CDR provides real-time, continuous monitoring for threats, and surface alerts and evidence to security teams for quicker response times.
• Firewalls: The tried-and-true system for network security that monitors and controls ingress and egress traffic.
• Cloud infrastructure entitlements management: CIEM tools enable security teams to manage cloud IAM policies, such as least-privileged access and permissions control. Security teams can use it to identify and manage cloud permissions, even across multi-cloud environments.
• Cloud-native application protection platform: CNAPP provides an end-to-end cloud security solution. It consolidates many of the other cloud security solutions here, such as CSPM, CDR, and CWPP, and vulnerability management. It often includes IAM, threat detection, and data protection capabilities, too.
• Continuous threat exposure management: CTEM provides a modern approach focused on continuously discovering, prioritizing, validating, and remediating threats across an organization’s attack surface to strengthen risk posture.

How to secure different cloud deployments

Cloud security needs depend on the type of cloud environment an organization wants to protect: public, private, hybrid, or multi-cloud. Each cloud computing environment has its own benefits, challenges, and ideal security tools.

Public cloud security

The public cloud is infrastructure and service provided by a third party. The CSP provides some security solutions, but the customer is responsible for securing their data and applications deployed as part of the shared responsibility model.

Challenges for public cloud security include larger attack surfaces as data and assets connect to the internet, needing to scale security depending on a growing list of who and what needs access, and understanding what the customer protects versus the CSP.

Cloud security tools to consider include CSP-offered ones, as those will have advantages over third-party solutions, as well as CSPM, CWPP, and CNAPP.

Shared responsibility model

While CSPs provide plenty of security services and measures, organizations can’t rely on them to protect everything. The shared responsibility model breaks down the aspects of security CSPs provide versus the customer. Generally, CSPs monitor and secure the cloud environment, while the customer protects assets and data.

Who is responsible for what will ultimately depend upon service-level agreements between CSPs and customers, but typically it breaks down like this:

• Software as a service (SaaS): The CSP provides application security, while the customer handles user, endpoint, and network security.
• Platform as a service (PaaS): The CSP provides platform security, while the customer handles user, network, and workload security alongside protecting applications developed on the platform.
• Infrastructure as a service (IaaS): The CSP provides infrastructure security, while the customer handles user, endpoint, workload, network, and data security as well as protection for applications installed on the infrastructure.
• On-premises data center: Everything is the responsibility of the organization. It controls security measures alone.

Private cloud security

A private cloud is a closed cloud computing environment dedicated to a single organization. With private cloud computing, organizations don’t share compute resources and get greater control over security, control, and customization. It can be hosted in an organization’s data center, through a third-party provider, or on premises. For organizations in regulated industries, private cloud computing ensures greater regulatory compliance. It does come with higher costs, more maintenance and management overhead, and the need for dedicated, in-house experts.

Organizations need strong IAM, cloud encryption, physical security controls, and monitoring capabilities to effectively protect private cloud environments.

For private cloud security, organizations should consider next-generation firewalls, VPNs, security information and event management (SIEM) platforms, and CASBs.

Hybrid cloud security

A hybrid cloud combines public, private, and on-premises environments, while keeping them all separate. Common use cases are organizations in regulated industries that have specific needs to secure data, or organizations still using their on-prem infrastructure for legacy applications and services.

This means that organizations need to include physical security measures alongside software-focused security. Hybrid cloud keeps the most sensitive data where the organization can secure it the strongest, while still using a public cloud for storing other assets. Some challenges include managing security access correctly, keeping each cloud environment distinct to avoid data exposure, and staying compliant with governance and regulatory requirements.

Types of cloud security for hybrid cloud include firewalls, VPNs, SIEM, Open Policy Agent, CWPP, infrastructure as code, and CSPM.

Multi-cloud security

Many enterprise-level organizations utilize multiple CSPs to store different data, assets, and applications. Using more than one cloud comes with security challenges, such as increased complexity and management, interoperability, and a need for more monitoring and auditing.

Multi-cloud security does provide benefits, such as greater flexibility and choice, prevents vendor lock-in, and potential cost savings. Plus, organizations get to use CSP security services which may be more robust than their own.

To make multi-cloud security work effectively, organizations need to centralize security management. This enables organizations to know how their assets and workloads are protected at any given moment and reduces the chances of misconfigurations or compliance issues.

For multi-cloud security, organizations should look into CDR, CSPM, DSPM, and CWPP solutions.

Cloud security best practices

To protect business-critical data, applications, and end users in the cloud effectively, organizations should implement the following cloud security best practices:

1. Determine your organization’s part of the shared responsibility model.
2. Secure the perimeter, whether using a network- or identity-focused approach.
3. Implement strong IAM controls, such as least-privileged access, step-up authentication, and role-based access.
4. Secure containers and virtual machines.
5. Secure applications.
6. Perform continuous threat monitoring.
7. Adopt zero-trust methodology.
8. Create cloud security playbooks for incident response, data breach, business continuity, disaster recovery, etc.
9. Encrypt all data.
10. Monitor for misconfigurations.
11. Follow relevant industry regulations and compliance.
12. Conduct penetration testing to ensure cloud security controls and systems work as intended.

Get stronger protection with agentic cloud security

One emerging technology is agentic cloud security, which harnesses AI models to provide autonomous and automated security capabilities in the cloud. It enables organizations to scale security measures and controls as their cloud presence grows and expands into multi-cloud environments.

Traditional cloud security relies on rules, algorithms, and threat detection. It requires human defenders to monitor suspicious behavior and comb through noise to find real risks. With agentic cloud security, human defenders get an AI teammate that helps reduce low-risk noise, improves mean time to resolution, and provides context and reasoning around risks.

Sysdig Sage^TM eliminates guesswork and accelerates security workflows at scale for organizations in the cloud. Learn more about using agentic cloud security here.