People, Process and Technology framework for Cloud Security

Organizations need to take a cloud-first approach to enable business agility and resilience while accelerating their digital transformation journey. Cloud security is becoming critical since most organisations are already using cloud computing in one form or another. Organizations adopting best practises focus on three key elements: people, processes, and technology.

Let’s discuss a layered approach to cloud security: people, processes, and technology.

People:

IT departments have adapted gradually over the past few years as the cloud has been more widely adopted. Unless your business was founded on the public cloud, technology leadership has typically inherited their environments, and they are looking for ways to get back control and security. I have mentioned below some important points with regard to people when it comes to cloud security:

• Cloud security officer in charge of a team with technical knowledge of cloud security
• Training teams on cloud security best practises and enabling easy access to updated security documentation can empower employees to more easily spot security issues and act with caution — when in doubt
• Program and process for identifying cloud security knowledge in people

Process:

“Process” is an area where a lot of organisations need assistance when it comes to cloud security. I’ve included some key points about the process of cloud security below.

• Cloud security assessment and gap analysis.
• Implementing a cloud security framework
• Periodic cloud security audit
• Continuous cloud security risk assessment
• Governance and compliance (security resources, policies, contracts, cloud service provider evaluation) as well as security controls such as ISO/IEC 27001, ISO-27018, ISO-27017, ISO-27018, NIST 800–53, GDPR, SOC 2 Audit, PCI-DSS, and so on.
• Monitoring and Logging: Vulnerability and Attack Management; traffic monitoring; log management; analysis; and mitigation strategies

Technology:

Technology that brings everything together (people and process) and at scale is absolutely necessary. I have mentioned some technologies which should be used for cloud security

• User Identity & Access management with a Zero Trust model. (MFA, SSO, conditional access, access control, etc.)
• Data security (encryption in transit/at rest and key management) and CASB/DLP (data classification and control, data backup and restore, data loss prevention) follow
• Network Security: Rules and configurations, firewalls, security group specifications
• Monitoring and logging with user behaviour analytics. (Threat detection, continuous monitoring and alerts, incidence and response, etc.)
• Hardware and Software Security: Physical security, scans, audits, patches server hardening, configuration hardening, logical segmentation, etc.
• Cloud Application Security: WAF, Bot Management, API Security, D-DOS Services, etc.
• Security practise adoption at every stage of software development (SAST, DAST, RASP, IAST, SCA, Pen-testing)
• Cloud security based on cloud services (i.e., IaaS, PaaS, SaaS), CSPM, CWPP, CASB, CIEM, SSPM

Organizations must understand that cloud security is a shared responsibility. Only by deploying the above security controls and ensuring the security of their data and workloads in the cloud through secure processes and practises can organisations achieve the highest level of security.