Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Cloud Security Compliance And Governance

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How To Think About Cloud Security Governance

Azure Governance – #7 – Microsoft Defender for Cloud | Regulatory Compliance

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When customers first move to the cloud, their instinct might be to build a cloud security governance model based on one or more regulatory frameworks that are relevant to their industry. Although this can be a helpful first step, its also critically important that organizations understand what the control objectives for their workloads should be.

In this post, we discuss what you need to do both organizationally and technically with Amazon Web Services to build an efficient and effective governance model. People who are taking their first steps in cloud can use this post to guide their thinking. It can also act as useful context for folks who have been running in the cloud for a while to evaluate their current governance approach.

But before you can build that model, its important to understand what governance is and to consider why you need it. Governance is how an organization ensures the consistent application of policies across all teams. The best way to implement consistent governance is by codifying as much of the process as possible. Security governance in particular is used to support business objectives by defining policies and controls to manage risk.

Creating the right governance model for your organization may seem like a complex task, but it doesnt have to be.

Why Cloud Governance Is Key To Security And Compliance

The Cloud industry is going through a phase of mass scale adoption across the globe. The Cloud as a whole has answered well to the overnight needs of thousands of organizations to attain full readiness for remote work.

As the adoption of cloud solutions and services increase, so do the accompanying risks and challenges around cloud security as well as regulatory compliance. Now, there is a whole new dimension to this already complex environment, which is remote work.

The sheer scope and scale at which remote work is prevalent at the moment is mind boggling. Such mass scale remote work environments cant just be managed in a haphazard manner. You need to put in place an elaborate cloud governance mechanism for this.

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Common Cloud Compliance Frameworks

These frameworks speak specifically to cloud compliance requirements. Cloud vendors andcustomers should be well versed on the specifics of these frameworks.

Cloud Security Alliance Controls Matrix: This foundational grouping of security controlsprovides a basic guideline for security vendors, boosting the strength of security controlenvironments and simplifying audits. Additionally, this framework helps potential customersappraise the risk posture of prospective cloud vendors.

FedRAMP: Meeting this set of cloud-specific data security regulations is a must fororganizations looking to do business with any Federal agency. FedRAMPs purpose is to ensureall cloud deployments used by the Federal government have the minimum level of requiredprotection for data and applications.

Sarbanes-Oxley : a set of guidelines governing how publicly-traded companies reportfinancial data to protect customers from errors in reporting or fraud. SOX regulations arentsecurity-specific, but a variety of IT security controls are included within the scope of SOXbecause they support data integrity.

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Why Cloud Security Governance

Cloud security governance enables organizations to reach new levels of agility, efficiency and cost-savings while operating within the cloud. It helps reduce the proliferation of shadow IT, helps ensure privacy of resources, facilitates data compliance, and prevents budget overruns.

Cloud security governance helps organizations implement frameworks that allow for easy access to cloud resources in spite of zero-trust, compliance, budgetary or technological constraints. In other words, cloud security governance makes life easier.

Cloud Security Posture Management For Aws

6 cloud governance framework principles and challenges

As cloud adoption accelerates, you need to manage security risks within your growing number of cloud services. A single misconfiguration in one service can lead to a serious data breach. According to Gartner, Nearly all successful attacks on cloud services are the result of customer misconfiguration and mistakes. They also predict that through 2023, at least 99% of cloud security failures will be the customers fault.1

How can you keep track of constant additions and changes to AWS services? How can you flag misconfigurations and suspicious activity across multiple clouds? How do you focus on the alerts that signal a real threat?

to help you tackle these unique cloud security risks with a continuous and automated approach.

1 Gartner:Innovation Insight for Cloud Security PostureManagement

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Discover And Cleanse Your Data

Your challenge is to overcome these obstacles by bringing clarity, transparency, and accessibility to your data assets. You have to do this wherever this data warehouse resides: within enterprise apps like Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics, or SAP a traditional data warehouse or in a cloud data lake. You need to establish proper data screening so you can make sure you have the entire view of data sources and data streams coming into and out of your organization.

Simple Steps Cloud Security Governance 2022

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Businesses are continuing to accelerate cloud adoption due to the numerous advantages associated with cloud technology platforms and services. Worldwide, the public cloud service market is expected to reach a valuation of $623.3 billion by 2023.

Despite massive cloud transitions, cloud security maturity varies. This article discusses key steps in building an efficient and effective cloud security governance model.

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What Is Terraform Cloud

is an infrastructure as code toolthat lets you define and manage infrastructure resources through human-readableconfiguration files. Terraform allows you to use a consistent workflow overyour infrastructure lifecycle, regardless of the resource provider. Theinfrastructure as code workflow lets your declaratively manage a variety ofservices and automate your changes to them, reducing the risk of human errorthrough manual operations.

TerraformCloud builds on these features by managingTerraform runs in a consistent and reliable environment instead of on yourlocal machine. It securely stores state and secret data, and can connect toversion control systems so that you can develop yourinfrastructure using a workflow similar to application development.The Terraform Cloud UI provides a detailed view into the resources managed by aTerraform project and gives enhanced visibility into each Terraform operation.

Terraform Cloud also has a private registry for sharing yourorganization’s Terraform modules and providers. Paid features include access controls forapproving changes to infrastructure, detailed policy controls for governing thecontents of Terraform configurations, cost estimates for runs, and more.

For more details on Terraform Cloud features and plans, visit theand pricing page.

A Primer On Cspm Ciem Cwpp And Cnapp

AWS re:Inforce 2019: Governance for the Cloud Age (DEM12-R1)

Through 2025, more than 99% of cloud breaches will have a root cause of preventable misconfiguration or mistakes by end users – Gartner

Cloud providers are providing tremendous value in enterprise environments with cloud computing, network and storage services – but not necessarily security, particularly for the majority of organizations who implement a multi-cloud approach for their business.

This eBook provides an introduction to cloud security and is designed to prepare you for todays realities, because cloud provider security is not enough.

Youll learn about:

  • The shared responsibility model for cloud security and how it impacts your business
  • CSPM, CIEM, CWPP and CNAPP tools that are available to elevate your cloud security posture
  • 5 key considerations when evaluating a third party cloud security solution

If you are just starting on your cloud journey, you will quickly realize the need to beef up your security, more so as you increase the number of services you consume from cloud providers. Read this eBook to help prepare and safeguard your business.

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Policy Management And Reporting

Define a governance plan for your hybrid Kubernetes clusters that translates into Azure policies that audit and enforce organizational standards at-scale. For example, you might enforce a policy to Kubernetes clusters to ensure the clusters get their source of truth for workloads and configurations from a defined git repo and track compliance using Azure Policy.

Cloud Governance Model Principles

The following five principles are a good starting point for building your cloud governance model:

  • Compliance with policies and standardscloud usage standards must be consistent with regulations and compliance standards used by your organization and others in your industry.
  • Alignment with business objectivescloud strategy should be an integral part of the overall business and IT strategy. All cloud systems and policies should demonstrably support business goals.
  • Collaborationthere should be clear agreements between owners and users of cloud infrastructure, and other stakeholders in the relevant organizational units, to ensure they make appropriate and mutually beneficial use of cloud resources.
  • Change managementall changes to a cloud environment must be implemented in a consistent and standardized manner, subject to the appropriate controls.
  • Dynamic responsecloud governance should rely on monitoring and cloud automation to dynamically respond to events in the cloud environment.
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    Key Components Of A Cloud Compliance Framework

    Governance

    These preset controls protect your sensitive data from dangerous public exposure. Essentialareas of cloud governance include:

    • Asset management involves organizations taking stock of all cloud services and datacontained, then defining all configurations to prevent vulnerability.
    • Cloud strategy and architecture includes characterizing cloud structure, ownership, andresponsibilities in addition to integrating cloud security.
    • Financial controls address a process for authorizing cloud service purchases andbalancing cloud usage with cost-efficiency

    Change Control

    Two of the clouds biggest advantages, speed and flexibility, make controlling change moredifficult. Inadequate change control often results in problematic misconfigurations in the cloud.Organizations should consider leveraging automation to continuously check cloudconfigurations for issues and ensure successful change processes.

    Identity and access management controls often experience multiple changes in the cloud.A few IAM best practices:

    • Continuously monitor root accounts, as they can allow dangerous unrestricted access.Disable them if possible or monitor with filters and alarms and require multi-factorauthentication .
    • Utilize role-based access and group level privileges, granting access based on businessneeds and the least privilege principle.
    • Disable dormant accounts and institutionalize effective credential and key managementpolicies.

    Continuous Monitoring

    Reporting

    Improves Cloud Resource Management

    Reduce risks with the right cloud governance strategy

    Cloud governance can help break down cloud systems into individual accounts that represent departments, projects or cost centers within the organization. This is a best practice recommended by many cloud providers. Segregating cloud workloads into separate accounts can improve cost control, visibility, and limits the business impact of security issues.

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    Threat Protection And Cloud Security Posture Management

    Enforce threat protection and introduce controls to detect security misconfigurations and track compliance. Use Azure’s intelligence to protect your hybrid workloads against threats. Enable security baseline monitoring, security posture management, and threat protection for all subscriptions containing Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes by enabling Microsoft Defender for Containers.

    Cloud Governance With Imperva

    Imperva supports cloud governance initiatives with solutions that provide data discovery, classification and masking.

    Beyond cloud governance, Imperva protects all cloud-based data stores to ensure compliance and preserve the agility and cost benefits you get from your cloud investments:

    Cloud Data Security Simplify securing your cloud databases to catch up and keep up with DevOps. Impervas solution enables cloud-managed services users to rapidly gain visibility and control of cloud data.

    Database Security Imperva delivers analytics, protection and response across your data assets, on-premise and in the cloud giving you the risk visibility to prevent data breaches and avoid compliance incidents. Integrate with any database to gain instant visibility, implement universal policies, and speed time to value.

    Data Risk Analysis Automate the detection of non-compliant, risky, or malicious data access behavior across all of your databases enterprise-wide to accelerate remediation.

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    Is It Possible To Achieve Compliance While Minimizing Time To Market

    Achieving and maintaining compliance takes time and effort, but the process doesnt have to slow down business progress. DuploCloud helps startups and small- and medium-sized businesses speed up the compliance process from start to finish thanks to low-code and no-code features that provision cloud-native applications that are already fully compliant out-of-the-box. Working with DuploCloud makes it easy for companies of all sizes to minimize time to market by designing, developing, and deploying fully compliant cloud-native applications from the ground up. Want to learn more? Contact us today.

    Improves Cloud Security Issues

    Establish cloud governance and compliance | Cloud Adoption Framework Series

    A cloud governance model establishes an authentication strategy to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information. It allows the organization that no matter where data exists or critical systems are deployed, there will be visibility of sensitive information and assurances that the appropriate security controls are in place.

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    Cloud Security And Compliance Management

    Cloud governance takes responsibility for all the key topics of enterprise security. It determines what are the organizations security and compliance requirements, and ensuring they are enforced in the cloud environment:

    Cloud governance should strike a balance between business drivers and requirements, real security risks, and the requirements of compliance standards. It should use existing policies and security practices, extending them to the cloud and translating them to the cloud environment.

    Using Cloud Security Frameworks For Cloud Governance

    Navigating the world of the cloud can be overwhelming on a good day. The nature of the cloud supports promising growth, but with that comes the concern of managing risks across all that data and information. To ease this overwhelming responsibility, cloud security frameworks have emerged to help both providers and the customer utilize the cloud securely. Many vendors today, including AWS, Azure and GCP, recommend using a defined framework to meet cloud security compliance standards. In this blog well explore what a cloud security framework is, why its important and how these frameworks benefit your cloud governance program.

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    Microsoft Defender For Identity

    Microsoft Defender for Identity is part of the advanced data security offering, which is a unified package for advanced security capabilities. Microsoft Defender for Identity can be accessed and managed via the Azure portal.

    Important

    Enable Microsoft Defender for Identity by default whenever it’s available for the PaaS services you use.

    What Are The Main Components Of Cloud Security Frameworks

    Cloud Security Strategy Archives

    At this point you know what a cloud security framework is, and how they can be useful to your organization. Lets dig a bit deeper into the actual components comprising your average framework. These factors can be broken down into several categories:

    CloudGovernance Controls

    Governance controls include preset controls aimed at protecting sensitive data from public exposure. Broad areas addressed through governance include asset management, cloud strategy and architecture, and financial controls.

    Misconfigurations & Identity

    Because of the scale of the cloud, it is extremely hard to keep up with changes in your environment. As a result, misconfigurations arise frequently. A common misconfiguration,relates to excessive privileges assigned to an identity given that hundreds if not thousands of identities live in cloud environments today, this type of misconfiguration, spread across your cloud is a very serious, and oftentimes, and unknown risk.. Some best practices include monitoring root accounts, using MFA, using role based access, following least privilege, and much more.

    Continuous Monitoring

    Continuous monitoring aims to assist in the complex nature of the cloud by monitoring and logging all activity to capture the who, what, when, where, and how of events in your environment. A few best practices include enabling logging on all resources, and defining metrics and alarms and vulnerability management.

    Compliance Reporting

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    What Is The Governance Policy

    The Cloud Governance policy must include:

    • Standards for the design of infrastructure
    • Monitoring of infrastructure and application
    • Security Policy
    • Platform/application
    • Business/user activity on that platform

    A firm policy will help you run the business well otherwise, it will result in security loopholes, reduced performance, and permanent data loss. This is why choosing the best solutions and following best practices is essential

    An approach to developing, building, and shipping applications that take advantage of modern Cloud computing services Click to explore about, Guide to Cloud Native Security and Beyond

    Effective Governance Risk And Compliance

    Cloud adoption continues to grow, which is evident from the fact that annual 2016 revenues for cloud vendors were within touching distance of $150 billion. Gartner also predicts that, a corporate no-cloud policy will be as rare by 2020 as a no-Internet policy is today. However, a cloud-ready security and compliance program is the need of the hour, to manage the risks and the complexities due to cloud adoption. This will enable organizations to face cloud challenges which, according to RightScales 2016 State of the Cloud Report include compliance with regulations, a lack of resources and expertise, governance and control and security. Although a challenge mainstay, confidence in cloud security is nonetheless rising SkyHigh Networks points out that 65 percent of IT leaders think the cloud is as secure, or more secure, than on-premises software.

    To maximize the benefits of cloud deployments while mitigating the risks, companies need to prioritize a cohesive approach to governance, risk management and compliance . A cloud governance framework can automate cloud security, risk, and compliance workflows, enable stakeholder reporting and visibility, and ensure best practices and standards for cloud compliance.

    With that in mind, here are five recommendations for ensuring a proper governance, risk and compliance framework for cloud assets and operations:

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    Utilize Unifyclouds Managed Cloud Services

    With Managed Cloud Services, you no longer have to budget the time, effort, and/or hardware expense to build your own solution. Instead, you can accelerate your move to a cloud platform, allowing for improved service levels and faster growth. UnifyCloud lets you focus on growing your business, and not the cloud its our job to make your cloud a success. We provide you with an infrastructure that scales as you grow, providing you with the necessary IT resources, security and the 24×7 uptime and availability you demand.We let you grow your cloud without worrying about security, uncontrolled spending, and rightsizing and optimizing infrastructure. We focus on the Cloud so you can focus on your business.

    Benefits of Good Governance

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