Why Cloud Security Policies Are Important
As companies move to the cloud, the majority of them are deploying multi-cloud infrastructures. As a result, cloud deployments are complex with multiple interdependencies and a wide range of potential cloud security threats and attack vectors.
With these greater security risks comes an increased need for effective cloud security management. A scattershot, disconnected approach to cloud security can leave visibility and management gaps that attackers can exploit to gain access to cloud-based resources and perform various attacks.
Cloud security policies help to formalize and organize an organization’s approach to cloud security. Policies acknowledge potential security threats and risks, and define the organization’s official approach to managing these threats. They also address requirements for compliance in the cloud with regulations and standards such as HIPAA and PCI DSS. This enables the company to more effectively design, implement, and evaluate its cloud security architectures.
How Many Policies Does an Organization Need?
The number of cloud policies that an organization needs depends on its cloud infrastructure and business goals. However, the number of policies that companies have vary dramatically. According to Check Point’s 2023 Cloud Security Report:
- 70% of respondents have six or more security policies.
- 26% have twenty or more policies.
- 30% have fewer than five policies.
These numbers indicate that different companies face various challenges related to their security policies. Companies with many security policies may struggle to effectively implement and enforce them. At the other extreme, the 30% of respondents that have five or fewer policies likely lack the processes and controls necessary to effectively protect their cloud environments against data leaks and security breaches.
The Challenge of Managing Cloud Security
One of the most common challenges that companies face when managing their cloud security architecture and implementing their security policies is alert overload. With complex, multi-cloud environments and numerous cloud security policies, companies may be tempted to implement an array of standalone cloud security solutions designed to achieve specific goals on a particular platform. For example, cloud providers often offer built-in security solutions that work only within their own cloud environment.
While this approach may check all of the boxes for security, it also introduces significant security challenges. A disconnected security architecture can have visibility and security gaps. It also contributes to alert fatigue. With multiple solutions and dashboards, security analysts are context-switching between various dashboards and analyzing alerts generated by a range of security solutions. The complexity of doing so introduces additional latency into the incident response process, reducing organizations’ abilities to quickly and effectively respond to cyberattacks.
Cloud Security Policy Management
One of the common cloud security policy management challenges that companies face is balancing security and operational efficiency. An organization with too few policies likely has security gaps, while the existence of too many policies indicates that the additional overhead and bureaucracy inhibit operations or that the organization is not actually implementing and enforcing those policies.
Achieving a balance between security and operational efficiency is key to effective cloud security policy management. Organizations should adopt a risk-based approach that prioritizes risks based on the full context of configuration risks, workload posture, network exposure, permissions, attack paths, and business priorities. Automation and orchestration tools can help streamline policy management, prioritize alerts, and ensure consistency across different cloud environments.
Enforcing Cloud Security Policies with Check Point
As cloud deployments become more complex, effective security management becomes even more important. Sensitive data and critical applications relocated to cloud environments are potentially vulnerable to attack and need to be managed using policies that implement cybersecurity goals and address potential cyber threats.
Unifying security across these areas enables organizations to focus on the most critical alerts, use actionable insights from a contextual effective risk management (ERM) engine, and utilize AI and risk scoring to reduce the attack surface. As a result, organizations are in a better position to act quickly when an issue arises.
Check Point CloudGuard ERM can help your organization to identify and manage risks to your cloud environment. To learn more about securing your cloud deployment, check out this ultimate cloud security buyer’s guide.
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