Cloud security can be a big challenge at the best of times, thanks to malicious actors, hackers, and breaches happening every single day, which we don’t even find out about often until the worst has already happened. The number of data breaches involving cloud systems is increasing every year, with at least 60% of small to midsize businesses being affected, and it’s only going to get worse from there. You should follow several best practices and protocols to keep your business safe. It’s not just about having some ace security team on your payroll; you also need to know how to work with them properly and what resources you need to keep your business safe. When it comes to cloud security, many things can go wrong. But a set of best practices, single sign on solutions, and security procedures can help your business remain safe while working within the cloud.
Introduction to Cloud Security
Cloud security and information security systems go hand in hand with one another. Cloud security itself is a subset of the other. In cloud computing, companies use a series of remote computing resources to host, store, transmit, and use data. Clouds come in different forms, such as public, private, and hybrid clouds. They also exist in various frameworks like infrastructure as a service, software as a service, and platform as a service. Each of these is used in different capacities by businesses every day. Clouds are cost-effective and scalable, and make most of what modern companies do possible. But despite their fantastic utility, threat actors continuously seek to circumvent security measures and attack cloud security. Keeping a cloud secure involves setting up security and information systems to protect sensitive data. This might mean changing authentication protocols to counter passwords, using data encryption, and instituting active monitoring protocols. It can also involve setting up a security operations center to maintain security within your cloud.
Using A Security Operations Center
Part of keeping your cloud operations safe and secure is using a security operations center (SOC). Businesses must use a SOC to not only safeguard themselves against cyber threats but also manage any potential security threats. And SOC is a way to maintain visibility in a central location. Want to improve threat detection? How about increasing efficiency in your incident responses? What about compliance standards for the payment card industry or privacy? How about protecting sensitive dataAAn SOC can do all these things and more. It essentially streamlines operations and provides proactive protection against malicious activity on your network. A SOC can be either internal or external to your company. Any good SOC should have access to all aspects of the cloud system. It should also be able to monitor everything from endpoints to infrastructure and should always be staffed by highly trained individuals.
Overview of Best Practices for Cloud Security
Establishing a security operations center is the first step to maintaining cloud security. You must also set up a series of security operations center best practices. Here are just a few to consider:
- Enable end-to-end network control to keep an eye out for possible third-party threats
- Watch out for too much hardware appearing on your network
- Keep and protect logs for your SOC
- Backup everything and make a contingency plan
- Enable multi-factor authentication
- Take a top-down approach
- Choose which sites are allowed to access, and which ones aren’t
By implementing a series of best practices (and basic cybersecurity measures) and following them to the proper standard, you can ensure your SOC is operating as designed and doing what it’s supposed to do.
Guidelines to Establish and Maintain a Security Operations Center
Establishing and maintaining your SOC is relatively simple and takes a common-sense approach. People working in the SOC need to be free to develop, strategise, and maintain their own setup. As such, they are also responsible to review standard operating procedures and ensure standards are up to date. The security operations center (SOC) should be responsible for developing and maintaining SOPs. The SOC should review the SOPs periodically to ensure they are updated and reflect the current environment. If the security environment changes (because of new technology, a change in the organization, updates, etc.), the SOC team can update operating procedures quickly. Furthermore, the SOC should also have policies that include what to do if security incidents happen. They should include step-by-step processes for identification, notification, containment, eradication, and recovery of your critical systems and a plan for monitoring/mitigating threats in the future.
Challenges of a Security Operations Center
Setting up a SOC isn’t without its challenges, and part of this is finding the right people for your team. A mix of technical and non-technical people who communicate well is key to this type of work. Communication is key to preventing problems, and it can also help solve problems when things get tough. In addition to finding the right people, you need to define clear goals and objectives for your SOC. What type of information do you want it to provide? How often do you want it to be updated? What do you consider a success? What is failure? What metrics will you use to determine if you’re getting false alarms or missed alerts? This is critical to your SOC working well, so your data is always safe.