How to safeguard assets in the cloud

By Prakash Bell, Head, Security Engineering, Check Point Software Technologies, India & SAARC

Securing your business domain needs to be as natural as locking the door and switching on the alarm when you leave. That used to be the basis of security, right?

Nobody gets through a door and onto the premises because there’s a solid barrier backed by an audible alert, and additional defense mechanisms. Any attempts by a bad actor to further break-in would trigger a series of events to deter, capture and block entry and access to the protected, valuable assets.

In today’s high-stakes digital world, this physical security is not enough. Physical entry to your premises is not your biggest concern. Instead, threat vectors manifest online via unmanaged and ubiquitous internet connections and traverse via the clouds that you’re using for applications, workloads and storage. And every cloud has multiple entry and exit points or doors.

So, with your business driving into the cloud, you’ll have significantly more metaphorical doors through which an intruder could pass, because each cloud vendor that you utilize will have several ways in and out. And the challenge is getting bigger; in a recent Check Point cloud security report 76% of respondents have adopted two or more cloud service providers (up from 62% in 2021) while here in India, Check Point’s Threat Intelligence Report finds that an organization in India is being attacked on average 1742 times per week in the last 6 months, compared to 1167 attacks per organization globally, a worrying trend of increased cyberattacks.

So how can you safeguard your cloud assets?

Continuing with the analogy of a door, comprised of a set of components which when fixed together from hinges to bolts to keys, makes up the whole structure -the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Cloud security is the same.

When looking with this same concept, one piece without the others is not strong enough. Apply that principle to your Cloud Security landscape, where malicious attacks are thriving and doubling year on year, getting more sophisticated with advanced threat vectors.

Such pieces coming together can be a great challenge but this is one that we’ve been solving for thousands of customers since we started 29 years ago. At Check Point, we only do security and we have the tools and skills to make your complete virtual security ‘door’. We can even provide the supporting alarm when security is breached. Our CloudGuard security platform can create the whole ‘door’ for you, but equally we can just fit a new lock or extra bolt if needed.

As a trusted cloud security partner, we aim to help strengthen our customers’ Cloud security posture and policy. Our focus is on prevention, rather than just detection and containment using a comprehensive portfolio that knits together multi-layered security to automate changes and updates, saving time, resource and money. We operate at the forefront of cloud security solving problems and challenges with our deep expertise and experience.

Some of the challenges we’re solving:

Hybrid Cloud – As per the diagram below, cloud access is direct because sophisticated and virtual security sits in the cloud, and there’s no need to backhaul connectivity for remote sites or users to other security gateways or data centers. You can use scalable virtual appliances in the cloud to extend the same detailed and exact security across all relevant clouds, giving the right performance, scale and support. With one single Smart user console, programmed with a common policy to extend protection across your enterprise. Making growing into the cloud easy, familiar and less risky.

Cloud Security Posture - When moving or extending in the cloud, the task of keeping track of cloud assets often seems endless. Changes on each cloud, then multiplied by the number of clouds you utilize and focus on getting everything right time after time. So, adopting a tool that automates this governance across multi-cloud will mitigate risk and save you time. Giving you total visualization and assessment of your security posture and bringing the ability to detect misconfigurations, and enforce security best practices across your compliance frameworks.

Security consolidation – Using multiple cloud security products from various vendors is an approach that leaves organizations with a patched architecture. It increases TCO (spending) and reduces ROI because integration and automation between different vendors' products becomes complicated. As a result, the effectiveness of organizational security decreases as more manual labour is needed. Cloud Security unification will yield lower TCO, as stated in this Gartner Article.

In addition, 2022 cloud security reports highlight that 80% of business surveyed have to use 3 or more dashboards to configure their enterprise’s cloud security.

See our 2022 Cloud Security report

Security basics

Building a secure cloud blueprint is a key step in your first line of defence. And that means a focus on key elements of your current infrastructure landscape to harden and enforce your weak points. Look for cloud security platforms with a focus on real-time prevention, automation, and unified management – multi-layered protection mechanisms that fully integrate won’t allow attacks to squeeze through gaps.

Ask:

What visibility and context do you have across your network and cloud assets?

How are your users aiding or preventing good security?

What integration is possible with your current security?

How can DevOps become DevSecOps without losing agility?

Can you readily apply and enforce uniform policies across all endpoints, users with differing security products?

Will I have a single portal for complete management?

Understanding what security you have for cloud and what you need is a key role for your security team. The trust and reputation of an enterprise largely rests on getting the right IT security posture. Ideally, it needs to be consolidated with your on premise or branch security on an integrated platform and not spread across multiple vendors. This will undoubtedly aide prevention, lessen gaps and increase speed of detection. Moreover, it also brings ease of management to growing cloud assets and a quicker return on investment. Allowing you to spend less time and fewer resources managing interfaces, consoles and vendor relationships.

To get you on your way, you can take a ready self-assessment of your security at http://www.cpcheckme.com/checkme/ or try reading our Cloud Security Blueprint 2.0.

At Check Point, we are part of a strong and growing company, which makes a huge difference to those who choose us to protect them. Our sense of purpose pushes all of us to extend further making more people and enterprises safe; Because you deserve the best security.