Cloud Migration Security

The Cloud Shared Responsibility Model

One of the benefits of the cloud is that the cloud service provider takes over responsibility for managing and securing part of an organization’s infrastructure stack. However, at some point in the stack, this responsibility shifts from the cloud provider to the cloud customer.

The cloud shared responsibility model lays out which parts of the cloud infrastructure stack are the responsibility of the cloud provider and the cloud customer. This depends heavily on the cloud model in use as Infrastructure, Platform, and Software as a Service models have different points of handover. One of the common challenges of cloud migration is understanding this cloud shared responsibility model. Without a clear understanding of the customer’s security and management responsibilities in the cloud, it is impossible to design and implement a secure cloud migration strategy.

5 Best Practices for a Secure Cloud Migration

An effective, secure cloud migration begins with a good cloud migration strategy. Some best practices for ensuring a secure cloud migration process include the following:

1. Architect for Cloud Security: Cloud environments are uniquely vulnerable to attack and have their own risks and security requirements. When designing and migrating to a cloud environment, it is essential to build security in from the ground up. For example, the use of network segmentation in cloud environments helps to manage security risks by isolating potentially at-risk or compromised systems from the rest of an organization’s IT infrastructure.
2. Leverage Native Cloud Solutions: Cloud providers commonly offer built-in cloud security solutions designed to provide the base capabilities that organizations need to secure their cloud infrastructure. By leveraging these built-in capabilities and properly configuring the available cloud security controls, an organization can dramatically decrease the potential security risks associated with its new cloud deployment.
3. Monitor and Automate from the Start: Cloud environments often rapidly become complex, sprawling infrastructures, especially if they span multiple cloud platforms. Implementing monitoring and automation from the very beginning is essential to keeping pace with the growing challenge of managing and securing cloud environments.
4. Implement Continuous Compliance: Cloud environments introduce new compliance challenges when compared to traditional, on-prem environments. As IT infrastructure expands to the cloud, implementing continuous compliance reduces the risk of cyberattacks and decreases the challenge of compliance management in the cloud. Continuous compliance requires deep visibility and automated monitoring so that compliance gaps can be identified and corrected — either automatically or manually — as quickly as possible.
5. Minimize Your Security Solution Footprint: Complex cloud security architectures are a common challenge for security teams, contributing to alert overload and management overhead. Cloud environments can contribute to this complexity with their unique security requirements and provider-specific environments. Minimizing your organization’s security solution footprint by deploying solutions that can work across on-prem and multiple cloud environments can improve security efficiency, expedite threat management, and enable the corporate security team to scale to meet their expanding responsibilities.