Page 20 - Cyber Warnings December 2015

However, they may lack enterprise-grade management and do not work across different cloud
providers since every provider’s controls are different.

Then there are host-based firewalls, which can offer an effective cross-cloud solution, but can
involve additional security management overhead and a limited feature set.

Network security controls in the cloud are still fragmented, and there is no single correct answer
when it comes to selecting the best option, so make sure you carefully evaluate the options and
choose the controls that best suit your business needs.

Visibility across the cloud
Without visibility across hybrid cloud environments, you can’t see what’s going on, let alone secure
it effectively.

Regardless of which security controls you choose, visibility is key to a successful migration and
deployment.

Make sure you implement controls that provide visibility across the entire hybrid environment.

Automate to improve security processes
Security automation goes hand-in-hand with visibility, and is the key to effectively migrating to and
managing a hybrid environment – especially given the flexibility offered by cloud environments as,
when you’re trying to manage hundreds or even thousands of policy rules, automation is the only
way.

Manual processes for security change management would simply be unable to keep up with the
constant updates needed across a large, hybrid infrastructure.

Automation helps to reduce unexpected business outages caused by changes, speeds up
application deployments in the cloud, and also eases inter-team working.

Segmentation, segmentation, segmentation
The cloud creates a much wider attack surface for your organization. So as network segmentation
is critical to security in the on-premise data centre, to stop infections and attacks spreading, it’s
doubly critical for hybrid environments.

Make sure you lock down access to your internal corporate networks from the IaaS platform as
much as possible.

20 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine – December 2015 Edition
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