Page 20 - Cyber Warnings

The service provider should also provide thorough visibility into your cloud instances so that you
can see all instances that are running.

One of the challenges of public cloud is that it’s so convenient to spin up new VMs and
containers that you may forget to shut them down later. These so-called “zombies” are latent
security threats because they present potential attack vectors into more business or mission
critical systems.

If you plan to use containers, as a growing number of enterprises are, be diligent about the level
of security protection they offer. The market for containers is still immature, and security – while
improving – is considered one of the technology’s weakest areas.

Remember, you are responsible for system-level security in your Infrastructure as a Service
(IaaS) and Platform as a Server (PaaS) instances.

Integrating these security controls and reporting in with your on-premises systems will create
efficiencies. Be sure to include the appropriate controls for the type of server employed.

These may include tools such as intrusion prevention, application control, advanced
antimalware solutions and threat detection. These should all be centrally managed for visibility
and compliance in addition to policy and threat intelligence sharing with your on-premises
infrastructure.

Application-level security
This level is primarily about identity and access management. Your best investment here isn’t
financial; it’s a policy that limits the ability of users to deploy cloud applications without IT’s
knowledge.

After ensuring policies are in place that offer IT visibility, the next step is to invest in multifactor
authentication and identity management. The first approach uses two or more devices or
applications to permit access.

Identify management locks down application access by requiring users to authenticate through
a secure resource such as LDAP or Active Directory.

If your organization already uses a directory, consider investing in cloud brokering software that
supports single sign-on so that users can authenticate to all their cloud services through their
local directory.

This gives IT complete visibility and shifts access control from the cloud service to your own IT
organization. Consider also investing in a secure VPN tunnel so sessions are never exposed to
the public Internet.

20 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine – September 2016 Edition
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