Cloud Security Mechanisms for Application and Infrastructure Security


Background Information

Organizations should take care to develop comprehensive security plans that address the people, processes, and technical concerns associated with infrastructure and application security.

Addressing People-Based Concerns. Educating employees on security best practices and exploring the risks organizations absorb when inviting employees into the cloud reduces corporate risk by creating a security-first mindset that involves employees and raises awareness of how an organization desires an employee to respond to risky behaviors. Clearly defining roles and responsibilities allows an organization to establish comprehensive policies and procedures that limit an employee’s access to sensitive materials according to only the information they need to perform their job. Organizations must develop comprehensive safeguards when employing third-party vendors that align with the security expectations of their organization by establishing strong protocols, establishing contracts, and monitoring third-party compliance.

Addressing Process-Based Concerns.  Developing strong policies and procedures undeniably increases security by defining best practices for multiple roles and responsibilities within an organization. AWS Organization Policy and Azure Policy provide solutions to develop processes to enforce cloud security policies, update security standards, and adhere to compliance and regulation. Implementing routine security scans that identify application security issues and provide compliance audits and security assessments through Azure Security Center or AWS Inspector allows for continuous monitoring and facilitates quick incident response. Organizations that automate patch management significantly increase security using tools like AWS Systems Manager or Azure Update Management Center. Large organizations housing sensitive data rely on backup recovery to ensure business continuity during a disaster or unforeseen event. Employing replication, failover, and recovery processes through Azure Site Recovery or AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery significantly minimizes downtime and data loss. While strong data recovery procedures guide organizations to implement safe solutions for sensitive information, organizations ensure success through regularly testing backups for sensitive applications and data.

Addressing Technical Concerns. Application security requires strong web application firewalls to filter and monitor HTTP web application traffic. Security rules detect and block SQL injection and cross-site scripting attacks, but must be combined with other in-application security mechanisms to validate user input to be effective. Data must be encrypted in transit and at rest using strong encryption algorithms. Azure Disk Encryption or the Amazon Elastic Block Store provides data integrity by encrypting the actual data and forcing dangerous hackers to break through infrastructure security measures and obtain the encryption key to decrypt sensitive data before gaining access to it. By using a layered security approach, security teams delay malicious hackers, increase vulnerability scanning effectiveness, and increase the amount of time security teams have to respond to incidents. Organizations must carefully monitor and restrict access to tokens, certificates, API keys, and other secrets in Azure Key Vault or AWS Key Management service. In addition to strong encryption mechanisms, organizations should employ strong authentication and access controls with Azure AD or AWS IAM. 

Improving Cloud Provider Selection According to Compliance Needs

Organizations should carefully consider security practices to ensure best practices and industry compliance. Regulatory compliance requirements in enterprise banking often determine which platform better suits an organization’s available data centers and predetermined compliance needs. Because different providers offer different certifications for compliance, an organization’s compliance assessment process significantly influences its ability to conveniently meet its compliance goals. While logging and monitoring effectively in the cloud becomes complex when performing compliance-based audits, organizations simplify processes using automated alerts and monitoring features to demonstrate their adherence to compliance and improve incident response.

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