Companies are increasingly moving from traditional, on-premises data centers to cloud-based deployments. The cloud provides a variety of benefits, such as increased scalability, flexibility, and cost savings. This shift to the cloud is also driven by the increased popularity of hybrid work models, as the cloud offers better performance and accessibility for on-site and remote workers alike.
These new times also introduce opportunities for new companies born in the cloud to base everything on the cloud. This includes the need to adopt DevOps and DevSecOps for both pure cloud-native companies and hybrid ones with both cloud-based and on-prem infrastructure.
REQUEST A FREE DEMO DOWNLOAD CLOUD SECURITY E-BOOKThe cloud is complicated. Multiple public cloud vendors exist, each with its own platform and way of doing things. Many organizations are adopting a multi-cloud environment to ensure that applications, data storage, DevOps processes, and other use cases are hosted in the environment that best suits their needs. This requires taking into account various considerations and tradeoffs, such as visibility, analytics, infrastructure, and security.
In many cases, the responsibility for making these decisions is shared by multiple people. This move away from an on-prem, centralized approach, although it provides numerous benefits, requires a proper security approach.
Security misconfigurations are common in the cloud, and Gartner predicts that 99% of cloud data breaches through 2025 will be the customer’s fault.
At the same time as their move to the cloud, many companies are reimagining their security infrastructure as well by adopting Secure Access Service Edge (SASE). In the new era, the ability to allow employees to work from anywhere and securely access all relevant corporate resources is of paramount importance. Today, 62% of employees work remotely at least part-time yet just over half use a secure remote access solution like a virtual private network (VPN). Exposing corporate resources without implementing proper security places the company at risk of compromise.
The rapid rise of remote work creates new security concerns and the need for new security controls to mitigate them. Some of these security controls are similar to on-premises IT (like the use of a virtual firewall on public clouds such as AWS/Azure/GCP), and some are unique to the cloud, such as workload security (containers, serverless), cloud-based email, privacy, compliance, identity & access management, and more.
Below, we discuss some of the main factors to consider when choosing the best cloud security solution, and then compare the top five cloud security vendors: Check Point Software, Palo Alto Networks, Amazon, Microsoft and Zscaler.
Check Point’s CloudGuard and Harmony Suites offer comprehensive protection and complete coverage across all cloud environments. Increased Security effectiveness is an added value with the wide coverage and multiple security controls throughout the cloud.
CloudGuard Platform includes:
Harmony Platform includes:
Palo Alto Network Prisma Cloud and Prisma Cloud Compute include Compliance & Governance (CSPM), Workload (CWPP). Prisma Access and Prisma SaaS include secure Internet access for branches and users, WAAP.
Microsoft also offers little or no SASE functionality but has CSPM and network security offerings.
Amazon offers little or no SASE functionality, but does have some CSPM and network security features.
Mostly provides SASE functionality, including branch & user security (ZIA) and corporate applications access (ZPA). Focused on cloud web security (SWG).
Now that we’ve explored the main advantages and disadvantages of each cloud security vendor, see how their service offerings stack up against one another.
The vendor that will provide the best cloud security is the one that has a platform that covers all important areas of cloud security. This provides unified management, policies, logs, and alerts, simplifying security. Additionally, meeting the needs of the modern enterprise requires the ability to meet today’s security needs for assets, users, servers, and applications and integrate security from the very beginning.
There is no “perfect” cloud security. However, the more interconnected it is, the more value and peace of mind can be gained. Effective cloud security enables an organization to take advantage of the granularity, scalability, and flexibility of the cloud while having a strategic plan and approach to their cloud and being as secure as possible.
Homogeneous Security in the Cloud as On-Premises
The cloud solution integrates in a homogeneous way with your current infrastructure and it’s centrally managed within your current environment. read more >
Check Point CloudGuard is a Lifesaver for Companies Requiring Reliable Protection and Access
Quick deployment, scalability, and a fully functional firewall available in the cloud. We were able to scale as required based on load and performance. With COVID-19, our users, including our Customer Center agents, are completely remote and use Check Point CloudGuard to even take calls so our customers are not affected in any way. read more >
Firewall for Public Clouds
Since I had experience with Check Point Next Generation Firewall before, it was easy for me to adapt CloudGuard. Basically, this solution has the same architecture and components as NGFW, so when you deploy it to the cloud, it feels like managing just another data center of your company. It also has a rich set of supported cloud providers, but for now we use it only on Google Cloud Platform. read more >