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The positive effects of cloud initiatives from increased agility and efficiency to relevant cost savings are usually felt quickly by companies. But with the speed with which many of them have approached cloud migration, new security risks are emerging. Privileged Access Management (PAM), specifically geared towards the challenges of the cloud, keeps these risks under control.
Identities Are The New Security Perimeter
A significant problem associated with the rapid cloud adoption is the resulting considerable increase in privileged accounts and credentials, making it increasingly difficult for IT teams to manage and secure them properly. In addition, more and more employees are working from home, and the management of critical infrastructures and development platforms and access to constantly new and updated web applications take place outside of the protected corporate environment.
If this sensitive cloud access is only covered with simple passwords, cyber attackers have an easy time with it. According to report, Verizon found that 77 percent of security breaches in the cloud are due to compromised credentials.
A rethink is needed here: companies need to understand that traditional on-premises security solutions alone are not enough to protect cloud environments adequately and that the new security perimeter lies in identities and privileged access themselves. Suppose companies continue to focus on simply moving their remaining on-premises legacy systems to the cloud, sooner or later. In that case, they will experience a rude awakening.
Suppose you want your cloud and all systems and data accessible through it to be protected. In that case, you must build strong authentication, authorization, and access controls for users from the start defined according to their roles and areas of responsibility. Privileged Access Management is central to the implementation of these controls.
The Benefits Of PAM For Cloud Migration
For many companies, moving to the cloud must be completed. Especially if you assume that the majority of the workforce will continue to (partially) work from home, security teams must address privileged access as part of the ongoing cloud migration to continue to protect sensitive data, ensure compliance, and prevent unauthorized access to systems.
Visibility must be at the heart of the cloud security strategy and must be maintained at all times. An occasional discovery scan of privileged accounts is insufficient because it does not offer the transparency to keep all risks under constant control. Continuous automated detection of all types of accounts is essential for the teams here. This is the only way to ensure that the authorizations are configured correctly, and adequate supervision is.
Monitoring - Keep An Eye On The Privileges Of Employees And Third-Party Providers
Another vital measure when securing cloud services is monitoring. Although the vast majority of users can be trusted, the behavior of those accessing sensitive information and privileged accounts should still be observed and verified. This includes monitoring network traffic for unusual activity. Access outside regular business hours, from unique locations, or other outbound activity. Organizations can also look for signs of compromise by requiring additional dynamic security controls for privileged access, such as a zero-trust approach requiring continuous verification.
At the same time, it is essential to limit the monitoring of your employees and keep an eye on your partners. The majority of businesses these days work with third-party vendors in a variety of ways. This includes external contractors who work on temporary projects, permanently integrated contractors, or personnel from temporary staff. Failure to monitor your privileged access would pose significant security risks.
Another essential measure to minimize the risk of abuse and become more resilient is the restriction of access according to the just-in-time principle. This means that access is only granted for a strictly limited period defined for the user and never permanently. Far too many companies maintain privileges for far too long, fail to allow passwords and accounts to expire, and delete requests when they are no longer needed, e.g. when projects end or employees leave.
Granting permanent privileged access violates the least privilege principle and harbors uncontrollable risks. Therefore, it is advisable to use PAM solutions that enable companies to give privileged access in real-time or only when required.
Keep An Eye On Your Cloud Responsibilities
When securing the cloud, it is also essential to know exactly what your responsibilities are. Many organizations are unaware that most misconfigurations and inconsistent controls are legally the user's faults, not the cloud technology provider's. Joint liability can only arise in rare cases, so it is also in the provider's interest to help their customers implement security best practices. However, the primary responsibility rests on the shoulders of the company. You must ensure that access and permissions for every identity and system interacting with cloud-based systems are appropriately managed and protected.
These systems can include critical applications or databases stored in the cloud application development platforms or tools used by the business or engineering teams. With this in mind, cloud access should be incorporated and audited using the same PAM policies, processes, and solutions across the company.
Companies must also keep an eye on changes and plan them in their security strategy. The increased use of cloud services also shows this: Companies today use an average of around 2,000 cloud services, which is 15 per cent more than last year, which is mainly due to the growth of SaaS.
As quickly as digital transformation projects are currently gaining pace, PAM can also help. In DevOps companies, a wide range of cloud resources are created, used, and paralyzed continuously and on a large scale. PAM assists by automating the rapid creation, archiving, querying, and rotation of secrets.
What exactly is full cloud migration? Cloud service alternatives allow businesses to cut operating costs and fill in gaps in human, resource, and time availability.
Moving your organization's identity and access management (IAM) services to the cloud can save time and money. During the move, some assets and resources could be lost. The following actions can be taken to stop this from occurring.
Take Stock of Your Assets and Make a Plan for the Future
A thorough asset inventory is necessary for successful cloud migration.
To find out what assets, software dependencies and data you have, you need to survey the organization. You may need to be made aware of legacy assets, especially if you are a long-standing company.
Once you have a complete list of all your resources, you can decide which items should be moved to the cloud and which ones must remain on-premise. Due to security concerns, regulatory requirements, or incompatibility, some resources might need to stay on-site.
For bigger firms, this is a substantial project. Senior product marketing manager at Ping Identity, we have stated that they require a methodology, a migration route, and a plan. All apps must be modified to connect to cloud infrastructure rather than on-premise infrastructure.
Once the inventory has been completed, it is time to start planning. Optimizing cloud migration can be accomplished by investigating cloud service providers, architectures, and related expenses. Here are some queries to consider when making cloud migration plans.
- Are Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud appealing to you as a public cloud service provider (CSP)?
- It would make more sense to use a private cloud with your company as the sole tenant, even though it comes at a higher cost.
- It can be more beneficial to have a "partner cloud" where your application service provider supplies the cloud.
In an article from 2022, We stated that "public clouds are fantastic for applications and resources that don't need to be vital for corporate compliance and operations." For the "most vital resources" and "most significant applications," such as R&D and supply chain management, ERP (enterprise resource plan), private clouds may be preferable.
Read More: Cloud Migration: Challenges to Consider when Making the Move
A Hybrid Cloud Environment
These models can be mixed and matched. Many businesses employ hybrid clouds, which store data and systems in the cloud and keep others on-premises. According to a recent poll, several respondents used both AWS and Azure as part of a hybrid cloud approach. As a result, there is more freedom and vendor lock-in is avoided.
Make sure you completely comprehend your shared-responsibility agreement with your cloud service provider. This is important. Everyone should be aware of who is in charge of solving any issues. Many respondents highlighted misunderstandings over the shared-responsibility agreement in the poll as their top concern for cloud security.
For instance, you may have plans to sign up for either a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) or an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud subscription. The cloud service provider takes care of the server hardware, storage, network, and virtualization software when using IaaS. The client manages the operating system, applications, and data (you).
The CSP in a PaaS system controls the middleware. However, data and applications are the client's responsibility. It is crucial to identify whether issue or an application fault was to blame for the data breach or security event.
One survey participant claimed that everyone in the cloud shared responsibility for everything. We must be able to comprehend the security system and our role in it.
Configuration For The Cloud
During a cloud move, ask your cloud service provider for support. A reputable CSP provider will assist your business (as well as your IT personnel) at every step of the way.
Work closely with your identity or cloud providers, relying on their expertise to establish a schedule and order. Apply applications cautiously, then collaborate with the vendor's skilled support staff. Although more expensive, this approach makes things simpler.
To connect all the various components of your identity systems after migration, your supplier might have some form of identity-orchestration solution. "Basically how you make the integration of applications and general IT infrastructures considerably smoother," defines orchestration.
Your cloud instance has to be correctly configured. Over the past few years, cloud misconfiguration has been cited as one of the leading causes of data breaches in Verizon's Data Breach Investigation Reports. Additionally, in recent times, public access to cloud databases has been demonstrated.
According to poll, 47% of AWS clients, 40% of Azure clients, and 35% of Google Cloud clients cited misconfiguration as their top security risk. Additionally, many AWS users claimed that their IT departments didn't know how to implement it. Cloud configuration should be fine for your CSP. But make sure to ask.
Some Google Cloud users were worried that their companies would experience misconfiguration issues due to a lack of platform knowledge. One user said that because Azure PaaS solutions are set up by default as public endpoints, they may be insecure if not taken care of.
Take your migration slow, which is another key piece of advice. Although it may be tempting to "lift and transfer" everything, it is necessary to evaluate software assets to ensure they function properly in a cloud journey environment. It may be necessary to adjust configuration and administrative settings for optimal security and performance.
IT can move one system at a time to perform A/B testing and work out any problems before making a permanent transfer and pulling the on-premises systems offline. This enables IT to move one system at a time. This process is slow, and each asset must be checked individually.
"Moving to the cloud is seldom that easy." Your cloud migration cannot be completed in a few short hours. As new resources are added and a schedule endorsed by the business relocates existing resources, you will need to manage a hybrid IT system.
Keep an Eye on Everything you Do and Test It All
The move to the cloud workloads needs to be completed. It would help if you kept an eye out for potential faults to guarantee that apps function as they did before.
Following the completion of the cloud shift, changes can be required. You might modify or reconfigure a few apps or alter the instance's settings to boost memory, data throughput, or storage.
Another critical stage in cloud migration security is the removal of outdated storage discs from your data center. This will enable you to save all the data locally before moving to the cloud. To safeguard against any issues with the cloud, the discs may be kept secure for a while, but by that time, the data would be out of date and useless as backups. The decision is now yours: Should you wipe or destroy them?
Many firms offer secure wiping of old drives to make them safe for sale on the secondary marketplace. Many companies might decide to destroy the discs, especially those that deal with financial or medical data. After a person retrieves the drives from a dump or a buyer purchases the drives using a recovery application, the data shouldn't leak.
Cloud migration is not without risks. But it should lead to a more open, usable, and scalable software environment.
Security in the cloud is typically higher than when you depend on third-party vendors. "The dangers associated with configuring it on your own premises are lower in the cloud."
Conclusion
In times of an intensified threat landscape and increasing cyber-attacks, PAM can considerably simplify the work of IT and security departments. This way, PAM provides a better overview of hybrid on-premises and multi-cloud environments, data and infrastructures, and privileges in general. A well-designed PAM also enables granular controls that support continuous authentication and secure authorization to be set up and implemented across different environments. At the same time, a strong PAM strategy ensures clearer audibility by making it easier to comply with regulations and compliance.
In the constant transformation, which is being pushed even further by Covid-19, which is forcing the use of cloud development services, PAM can offer companies an additional valuable level of security. Organizations can reduce the attack surface and ultimately overcome cloud security challenges by precisely controlling what users can see and do on cloud platforms, services, and applications.
