A three-pronged approach to secure your multi-cloud

Introduction

Strong multi-cloud security strategy – a business imperative

Switching to cloud is no longer about cost optimization, but more about ensuring business continuity, resilience, and innovation. 

Its increasing adoption has also led to an exponential rise in data breaches. In the U.S. alone, the number of records that were compromised increased tenfold over the past decade. Given that most companies tend to adopt a multi-cloud strategy to run their operations, it is quintessential to have a unified security strategy to realize business outcomes. 

Multi-cloud security concerns

Building a multi-cloud security strategy can be a huge challenge

Managing multiple cloud services can quickly become complex when each cloud service provider offers its own administrative and security tools. And that complexity can lead to silos, limited visibility, inconsistent application of controls, or unexpected and undetected gaps in enterprise security, creating new, potentially costly risks.

Most multi-cloud users today rely on a blend of private and public cloud solutions. The average user has nine cloud vendors in all. Among cloud-only enterprises, that number rises to 13. What’s more, the number of cloud-native organizations has doubled in the past year.

Lack of a common framework could prompt companies to adopt mass-market solutions that may not suit the nuances of their business.

It is surprising to note that companies tend to skip a simplified, centralized management console to manage applications and workloads across multiple clouds and face coordination issues.  

Increasing use of unstructured data and voluminous data coming from connected devices is making multi-cloud vulnerable. 

In an era of massive consolidation, mergers, and acquisitions across industries, enterprises are grappling with delivering multiple products and solutions consistently across multiple clouds. Choosing between applications with competing priorities and clashing workloads can deter even the most accomplished IT teams. 

Most multi-cloud users today rely on a blend of private and public cloud solutions. The average user has nine cloud vendors in all.

Multi-cloud security strategy

Principles for successful cloud security adoption  

Cloud security strategy can be daunting, especially for companies that are not digitally native. Fortunately, there have been ample success stories to demonstrate that any company can have a robust security strategy, if they adopt the following principles:

• Cloud agnostic: Enterprises need to leverage the power of public and private clouds to get the kind of setup that suits their business needs. While this does increase the number of variables that you have to manage, the payoff can be immense, both from a security as well as a business value perspective.

• Consistency: Functional and operational consistency is paramount to the success of the strategy. Uniformity amongst controls, processes, frameworks, and operational modes ensures that applications run smoothly across all environments and geographies, enabling the security strategy to scale.

• Digitization: Cyber security strategies on a multi-cloud platform should be agnostic to people and cloud service providers (CSPs). Implementing platforms that are capable of proactively seeking out threats and neutralizing them in time is the way forward. Such systems require minimal investment and are often built to function right out of the box.

• Futureproofing: Foundational security practices usually have native security controls that are rapidly approaching obsolescence. Companies must modernize their enterprise security framework, to secure operational and governance services as well.

• Centralized management: Lack of a unified console to monitor a multi-cloud setup is a problem that compounds over time. Centralized management of multiple cloud environments offers tools to identify misconfiguration issues and run compliance checks. 

Implementing a multi-cloud strategy

Three ways to tackle multi-cloud security challenges

We believe that the three-pronged approach covering cyber hygiene, enhancement, and modernization, in that order, should be the foundation for implementing a robust multi-cloud security strategy.

• Cyber hygiene: The formula for a multi-cloud setup is not vastly different from that of a single cloud environment. Adopting multi-factor authentication (MFA), a carefully configured firewall, and constantly monitoring access logs can help prevent most of the cloud hijacking instances. Overarching these with operational segmentation and awareness programs would put your company in good stead when it comes to multi-cloud cyber hygiene.

• Cyber enhancement: Existing enterprise capabilities must be modified to suit a multi-cloud setup to ensure there are no blind spots in the security strategy. These enhancements will have to be made for the dual purpose of updating existing infrastructure while ensuring that their weaknesses are not translated into a multi-cloud environment.

• Cyber modernization: Shifting to a multi-cloud approach presents an excellent opportunity to modernize cyber-security controls and policies. The next crop of technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data operations, automated software solutions will simplify the management of multi-cloud security.  

Conclusion

For successful multi-cloud adoption, security cannot be an afterthought. It needs to be developed alongside to underpin all decisions taken in pursuit of fine-tuning your cloud setup. Each aspect of the multi-cloud strategy - centralization, consolidation, and consistency will have to be dealt independently before synergizing them to build your holistic cyber security strategy.