Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) are seeing challenges that have no resemblance to those of a decade ago. CISOs are tasked with aligning cloud security plans with the business goals of your company while protecting and advancing the end user experience.
Your CISO probably frequently reports to your board, recounting the ways in which they are handling technical complexity associated with cloud security, and the eroding of the traditional network perimeter. Today, the cloud, user identities, and a growing fleet of endpoint devices create a fluid perimeter that forces companies to establish the user as the place to focus cyber security efforts.
In addition, cloud security demands new levels of expertise to handle the variation of skills needed to run a modern hybrid cloud or multi-cloud environment.
Three Steps to Managing Technical Complexity
CISOs are dealing with an expanded attack surface due to the transition to permanently remote or hybrid work environments. They are also, in many cases, managing more than one cloud, and each of the three major public cloud providers have unique management elements. As companies transition to an identity-based security perimeter, the conventional security approach has been replaced with new tools, policies, and procedures. Here are three steps you can take to prioritize the right areas of cyber security:
- Manage privileges. You may have offered expanded privileges during a transition to the cloud, but after migration is complete on a project, you need to rein in access. Begin by monitoring which areas of the network are accessed by individuals for their jobs, and if a role doesn’t require certain resources, remove those privileges.
- Detect misconfigurations. Cloud misconfigurations always present a risk, when a user with too much freedom accesses a misconfigured cloud resource, the problems can be far-reaching and complicated to resolve. There are automated tools available to help you identify misconfigurations and unnecessary privileges and mitigate these issues to reduce risk.
- Prioritize. You’re never going to have enough time to address all misconfigurations, so spend time on those that present the greatest risk.
Building a Cloud Security Team
Cloud security requires specific skills, and you’ll need to build a team that is well-balanced to address your most pressing concerns. Your team should include these three areas of competency:
- Architectural: Your security team needs the ability to examine your current security position and create a plan for how it will mature over time.
- Cloud engineering: This is the maintenance arm of your security team, tasked with handling day-to-day cyber security concerns and the management and maintenance of it.
- Response: You need to focus on handling incidents on a regular basis, with specialists trained to identify threats and mitigate them to reduce the impact on your organization.
Your ideal security team should be able to handle cloud, network, and development aspects while working collaboratively. This is a particularly difficult task given the shortage of cyber security specialists currently in the market.
But an alternative is the opportunity to develop your in-house team with the right training, provided either by senior members of your staff or through a third-party certification program. When you are choosing new cloud solutions, look for partners that offer training along with their implementation plans.
Cloud security continues to dictate the changing responsibilities of the CISO and how security teams are comprised. Contact us at Cloud Source for guidance in developing a solid cyber security strategy and in leveraging the right security management solutions for your environment.