What’s Different About Data Security in the Cloud? Almost Everything.

In 2019, most organizations already had digital transformation plans in place. These plans included migrating workloads to modern cloud architectures. However, the Covid-19 pandemic compelled organizations to expedite their modernization efforts due to practical reasons.

For instance, setting up a kit (or pod) for an application using a legacy system requires a complex process involving physical servers, software installation, hardware provisioning, data center setup, and networking. This process can be time-consuming. Conversely, deploying a new kit to support an application in a cloud environment takes just five minutes, with no human involvement required.

With so many people working from home and nobody wanting to fall behind schedule, accelerating migration to the cloud became an easy choice.

The drive toward modern infrastructure did not ensure a parallel modernization of security. As the infrastructure modernization leaped forward based on the need to maintain operations while keeping employees safe, it became even more challenging for security to keep pace. Even years after the world shut down due to the pandemic. For example, I have a customer with a modernization project. In their enterprise, every application investment can go to a legacy platform or a modern (cloud) platform. While there’s a budget for both platforms, the urgency created by the pandemic made developing on the legacy platform simply impractical. To meet the accelerated schedule, my customer promptly reallocated the budget from the legacy to the modern platform to support new application development.

The rapid modernization has prompted organizations to swiftly adopt cloud technology, making “cloud first” the primary architecture for large enterprises and global organizations. However, this rapid transition has led to a lag in security measures. Although modern environments cater to developers, security concerns have not been adequately addressed. Security teams must involve additional teams and facilitate interaction between them – a challenging task. Organizations that have accelerated modernization without corresponding security updates now face security control gaps and a deficit in essential skills. To address these security gaps, controls, compliance, and privacy issues, security teams must assertively collaborate with the cloud architecture team to obtain the necessary privileges.

New Platforms Require New Methods 

Organizations confront two primary risks. The first is the threat of a data leak or breach, which, when considering subsequent investigations and remediations, can have enduring negative repercussions for an organization. The other risk is non-compliance, which could lead to a stern warning or a substantial monetary fine, serving as a stark reminder that data compliance is non-negotiable. Persistent non-compliance will result in increasingly severe consequences.

Organizations must prioritize data security practices to address the security gaps that come with rapid modernization. A common issue is losing track of sensitive data when workloads are moved quickly. To protect sensitive data, it’s important to have a good data catalog and keep track of copies and snapshots. Additionally, organizations need to implement access control policies for sensitive data, maintain audit trails, be able to conduct data forensics and verify and minimize entitlements while checking for vulnerabilities. While these practices are not new, applying them to modern environments is a challenge, and the skills gap in this area contributes to ongoing security issues.

Visibility is key 

Compliance mandates revolve around visibility and stringent security controls. Establishing a rock-solid foundation of visibility into the data is an absolute necessity since it drives everything else. Prioritizing visibility is paramount as it directly addresses the majority of your compliance requirements. Insufficient visibility will leave you clueless about the whereabouts of the data and the ongoing activities, making it impossible to effectively mitigate security risks. Establishing a baseline behavior requires knowing the “6 Ws” of your data: Who’s accessing it, what they’re doing with it, why they need it, where they’re accessing it from, when they’re accessing it, and which servers they’re using. Without this information, creating an access control policy becomes an exercise in futility.

However, delving into true data visibility unleashes a barrage of information. To sidestep alert fatigue and discern the data that warrants attention, robust User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) and other tools are indispensable to keep security teams informed about actionable activity.

Another critical element of visibility is the rigorous classification of data. For privacy regulation compliance, a consistent and scalable approach to uncovering and cataloging sensitive data, such as employee or consumer data, is non-negotiable. This is essential in preparing the data for responding to subject rights requests. Failing to do so could lead to severe consequences arising from non-compliance with privacy regulations.

A CyberSecurity Framework for Securing Cloud Data for Digital Transformation

This whitepaper proposes a security and compliance framework for cloud data, building on the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) CyberSecurity framework. The comprehensive framework includes:

• The two stages of IT infrastructure during a cloud migration
• Inherent versus obtained DBaaS controls and processes
• An extensive comprehensive look at the compliance and privacy regulations that apply to your data management and security of data
• The steps to establishing the framework in your organization

Download this whitepaper today.