Whether you are responsible for regulatory compliance, DevOps, or overall IT security, chances are public cloud infrastructure is part of your growing portfolio. As enterprise workloads move to the cloud, cybersecurity professionals face challenges securing these workloads in the dynamic environment.
Enterprise cloud security and compliance is a sensitive topic that keeps people awake at night. If the best security practices are not followed, cloud infrastructure can be quite vulnerable.
Manual security work in a cloud environment is like waiting for disaster to happen. However, there is good news. Automation can help meet most cloud security challenges. Here we have discussed how to secure a public cloud with automation.
Understand Cloud Security
One of the challenges in managing enterprise cloud security is the skills gap. Getting compliance and security right in a cloud infrastructure is different from a data center or in-house systems. Going from monolithic application architecture to a containerized microservices architecture increases complexity.
In such a scenario, human error increases the potential attack surface. The automation of cloud security is not only about choosing the right automation tools. You must have a good understanding of what you need to do to improve overall safety.
Automate Infrastructure Buildout
Infrastructure deployment is an essential aspect of IT buildout. Enterprises have to deploy an entire fleet of applications and hundreds of servers to meet business requirements. Maintaining a human and systems ratio is an important aspect.
For example, you can use two systems engineers for tens of thousands of servers. This might look like an impossible task for many. But automation can make things easy. Instead of hiring multiple system engineers to deploy servers manually, you can use two system engineers to write and maintain automation scripts that can deploy instances automatically.
In the world of IT, you can deploy a server with one command. Thus, you can deploy thousands of servers with defined security configurations automatically with the use of scripts. Automating infrastructure buildout reduces the chances of human error in deployment, which increases security risks.
Build A Good Security Strategy
When you have an unambiguous idea of what needs to be protected, you can choose the right automation tools and enterprise cloud security that can work well together. Best practices checklists associated with dynamic monitoring capabilities are the foundation of a suitable cloud security strategy. The strategy should have a human touch, but its implementation should be automatic.
Continuously Check Instances
Companies moving to the cloud often find themselves scrambling to update configurations of thousands of servers. Engineers can use automation tools to ensure the deployments are using new versions of the applications. These automation scripts are declarative management tools that configure versions, metal servers, and virtual servers.
When any new version of any application is launched, the automation scripts manage the tasks of getting that update, ready for production. It manages security-sensitive configurations, binds the version to central configuration, installs intrusion detection agents, and implements multi-factor authentication.
Fully Automate Deployments
According to most IT experts, automated deployments can improve companies' IT security posture. Deployment automation ensures every Puppet script can get deployed on every server on a schedule that provides high-availability. This allows a security engineer to respond to security threats without having to reboot servers manually.
Include Automated Monitoring Tools
When public clouds support individual applications, the security engineer should monitor the entire infrastructure through a single interface. Unified monitoring gives the engineer intelligence needed to protect the core assets.
Instead of using customized tools or specific tools for monitoring, enterprises need to shift to tools that offer automated reporting and trend analysis across the cloud environment. These automated monitoring systems include sophisticated intrusion detection tools and governance features that allow enterprises to stay compliant.
A responsible cloud security strategy does not mean your IT systems are 100% impermeable. Cloud automation ensures human error at any stage does not leave your systems, applications, and data vulnerable to attack.