Cloud Sprawl? Here is a Two-Step Remedy

The increasing cloud adoption by businesses has also led to the rise in the risk of cloud sprawl, resulting in a large number of cloud security threats. The enterprises rush to capitalize on efficiency, flexibility, and scalability with the help of cloud technology. An Enterprise Strategy Group performed a survey on 600 IT professionals, of which more than half (64%) believed that spending on cloud technology would increase in 2019 and 2020 concerning the previous years. During the survey, only 4% predicted a decrease in usage.

Moving your business to cloud storage was once considered careful planning, whereas now the enterprises are primarily dependent on cloud technology. The Cloud Security Alliance reported that 66% of the enterprises operate in multi-cloud environments, where every cloud has different security requirements. While dealing with data access controls of different levels to multiple cloud storage services, it is quite easy for an enterprise to get lost in cloud sprawl.

To overcome the challenges of cloud security, organizations try applying a blanket approach. But with the differences in cloud services like Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS), the blanket approach is no longer inevitable. To reduce the chaos of cloud sprawl with a viable roadmap, enterprises should take the following two steps –

Step 1: Realize responsibility

The public cloud is believed to attract many security risks, whereas this is not the exact cause. Many enterprises were not open to adopting public clouds as they were in a notion that a public platform would host security threats. Cloud security is not gaining confidence as it is otherwise the most secure and safest platform than any other data storage. When companies like Amazon got onto providing cloud storage as an open entity, the confidence of many enterprises also developed.

According to Gartner, by 2025, there will be overwhelming support for cloud security. Gartner predicted that the shortcomings in cloud security would be 99% due to the customer’s fault. The security shortcomings can be due to overlooked access risks, security misconfiguration, or a cloud sprawl. When customers have too many clouds, it becomes difficult to attend the security issues responsibly. Dealing with different cloud providers, need a systematic approach towards securing the cloud infrastructure individually. Enterprises should match the security perspectives of the cloud providers and the security measures that they undertake in their infrastructure.

Step 2: Define a process on security

The security process defines the division of responsibilities between the customer and cloud provider. The different kind of cloud security providers like SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS, dictate the security providers and customers on security processes. It is the responsibility of an enterprise to know about the various security provisions from the different cloud providers. The variation in cloud services offering different cloud infrastructures may not be clubbed under one size.

The corporate systems can be secured by introducing an owner who can create a security strategy and attend security audit requirements. Overlooking of data access, in a typical scenario, can be attended to by the owner.

Cloud technology is driving incredible value to solve business data security issues. When an enterprise deals with multiple cloud environments, it is likely to adopt misconfigurations and overlooked details. Mishandling or negligence may cause a massive financial loss to the enterprise.

A Certified Ethical Hacker (C|EH) is a credential that ensures that you have the knowledge and skills to intrude cloud security and explore vulnerabilities that must be fixed. The program takes you through the five phases of ethical hacking and with dedicated lab provision, it also enables you to practice ethical hacking on various domains like cloud storage and mobile phones.

Source: eccouncil.org