Cloud computing is sweeping across industries and majority of organizations are moving to the cloud in order to scale up their business. However, when it is not managed properly, it can also expose the organizations to sophisticated cyber-attacks. With more organizations employing hybrid work environment while moving their workloads and data to the cloud, there has never been a greater need for a holistic approach to security management.
The cloud is an enabler of business productivity, yet it must be used with a security-first approach to minimize risk. With the rising security risks and compliance issues, security aspects with respect to cloud infrastructure need to be incorporated from the very beginning. As per a recent study, 79% of enterprises want better integrated security and governance for their data in the cloud. It’s no surprise that enterprises are focusing on strengthening their cloud security and compliance measures.
Here are six cloud security trends that can help you navigate your way through the ever-evolving cloud security challenges:
#1 DevSecOps: It stands for development, security, and operations. It is the seamless integration of security testing and protection throughout the software development and deployment lifecycle. Like DevOps, DevSecOps is as much about culture and shared responsibility as it is about any specific technology or techniques. It requires a change in culture, process, and tools across these core functional teams that makes security a shared responsibility.
#2 Cybersecurity Mesh: Gartner defines cybersecurity mesh architecture as a composable and scalable approach to extending security controls, even to widely distributed assets. It is a practice of implementing IT security infrastructure resulting in building perimeters at the time of development. Many security practices use a single perimeter to secure an entire IT environment, but a cybersecurity mesh uses a holistic approach. It independently secures each device with its own perimeter such as firewalls and network protection tools.
#3 Zero Trust Security: It is a strategic approach to cybersecurity that secures an organization by eliminating implicit trust and adding continuous validation at every stage of a digital interaction. It uniquely addresses the modern challenges of new-age businesses, including securing remote workers and hybrid cloud environments.
#4 SASE Framework: Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), termed coined by Gartner, is technology used to deliver wide area network (WAN) and security controls as a cloud computing service directly to the source of connection (user, device, Internet of things (IoT) device, or edge computing location) rather than a data center. It combines SD-WAN with network security functions, including cloud access security brokers (CASB), Secure Web Gateways (SWG), antivirus/malware inspection, virtual private networking (VPN), firewall as a service (FWaaS), and data loss prevention (DLP), all delivered by a single cloud service at the network edge. Once the SASE provider adapts to a new threat, the adaptation can be available to all the edges.
#5 Shift Left Security: Shift-Left Security is the practice of moving security checks as early and often in the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) as possible. By moving steps like testing and security to the development stage, fewer mistakes are allowed to pass through advanced stages of SDLC. Vulnerabilities found earlier in development are much easier and cheaper to fix. It usually means less work for Quality Analysts and less remediation costs for businesses.
Wrapping up
Organizations are likely to move more services to the cloud in the coming year. So, there will be rise in attacks on the infrastructure and the data it contains. Moving forward, cybersecurity efficiency will be defined by the organizations’ ability to proactively identify and prevent cyber-attacks in the cloud. With the right cloud security tools and frameworks, organizations can beef up their security to minimize the threat of a cyber breach.
