As the digital landscape rapidly evolves, the shift to cloud environments has transformed how businesses operate and manage their data. And as businesses grow their cloud presence, the challenge of keeping everything secure gets bigger and more complex. It’s like expanding your house but realizing you have added more windows and doors for intruders to sneak through.
According to the 2024 Check Point Cloud Security Report, there has been a notable rise in cloud security threats, increasing from 24% in the previous year to 61% in 2024. This surge represents a 154% growth in cloud threats, with 61% of organizations reporting significant disruptions.
With the stakes this high, integrating a robust cloud security strategy in your cloud is not just advisable—it’s essential.
Why Zero Trust for the Cloud?
Cloud security involves multiple layers of protection, each designed to address different vulnerabilities. Zero Trust Architecture operates on a simple concept: Never trust, always verify!
Unlike traditional models that assume everything inside the network is safe, Zero Trust security approach requires verification for every access request, regardless of its origin. In cloud-based systems, traditional methods that focus on protecting the boundaries of a physical network are no longer effective.
Cloud environments are more dynamic, distributed, and accessible from anywhere, making it impossible to define a physical perimeter.
This introduces new challenges:
Expanded Attack Surface: Cloud expands the traditional network perimeter, increasing the number of potential attack vectors.
Dynamic Environments: Cloud environments are often fluid, with resources being scaled up or down, making it challenging to maintain consistent security controls.
Data Visibility: Unlike traditional on-premises systems, cloud services can restrict visibility into data flows and access controls.
Hence, organizations need more unified cloud security solutions that offer consistent policies, centralized management, and comprehensive end-to-end visibility across multiple cloud environments.
Zero Trust and the Cloud: The Perfect Partnership!
Implementing Zero Trust within a cloud environment addresses these challenges by focusing on continuous verification and minimizing trust assumptions. Here are some prerequisites of implementing Zero Trust Cloud:
- Continuous Verification: Zero Trust emphasizes continuous monitoring and validation of user identities, devices, and network traffic. This principle is crucial in a cloud environment where:
- Employees accessing the cloud from various locations and devices are authenticated continuously.
- Cloud resources are provisioned and deprovisioned frequently, requiring constant validation to ensure only authorized users have access.
One of our clients, a telecommunication service provider, faced difficulties in overseeing a large infrastructure with various network devices and lacked access to valuable information on privileged user actions.
We addressed these issues by implementing continuous verification, rotating administrative credentials, and ensuring complete control over privileged sessions. The result was a more secure, scalable network with enhanced visibility and control, even as their operations grew.
2. Least Privilege Access or Principle of Least Privilege (POLP): Least Privilege Access is a security principle that ensures individuals and systems have only the minimum level of access necessary to perform their specific tasks.
Since no single tool can provide complete visibility over all data, using identities as the foundation for applying the Principle of Least Privilege (POLP) is a smarter, more efficient way to strengthen security.
For zero trust cloud, organizations need the following implementations:
- Granular Access Controls: Cloud platforms allow for detailed permissions settings at various levels (e.g., file, application, or service), ensuring that users have access only to what they need.
- Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Assigning roles based on job functions and regularly reviewing access rights and reducing the risk of unauthorized access.
We implemented POLP approach for our telecom client to strengthen access controls and improve visibility into privileged sessions. We started by thoroughly reviewing user roles and privileges, pinpointing where people had more access than necessary.
Next, we brought in real-time monitoring tools to keep a constant eye on privileged sessions. This gave us clear insights into who was accessing critical systems when they were accessing them and for what reasons. It also helped us quickly flag any unauthorized or suspicious activity.
3. Micro-Segmentation: Micro-segmentation involves dividing your network into smaller, isolated segments to limit the spread of threats. In the cloud, micro-segmentation can be applied based on risk level or sensitivity. Security policies are applied at a granular level, controlling access between segments and ensuring that only authorized users and services can communicate with each other.
In a cloud environment, this approach enhances security by:
- Isolating Workloads: Separating sensitive applications and data into distinct segments prevents lateral movement in case of a breach.
- Enforcing Security Policies: Applying security policies at a granular level for each segment reduces the risk of unauthorized access and data exfiltration.
Demystifying Cloud Security Technologies
There are dozens of security technologies out there to implement Zero Trust in your cloud. It can often sound like the word soup! Here, we help you demystify these technologies :
1. CSPM (Cloud Security Posture Management)
- Operates across various cloud components or environments, such as IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, containers, and serverless code.
- Performs security evaluations and automated compliance monitoring.
- Scans for misconfigurations that could lead to data breaches.
2. CNAPP (Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform)
- A security and compliance solution to build, deploy, and run secure cloud-native applications in public cloud environments.
- Have combined capabilities of CSPM, CIEM, and CWPP tools.
- Provide end-to-end visibility on configurations, technology stacks, and identities.
3. CWPP (Cloud Workload Protection Platform)
- Detects and removes threats inside cloud software.
- Minimizes vulnerability exploits in software currently functioning.
- Secure servers from unauthorized external access.
4. CIEM (Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management)
- Addresses excessive permission management challenge.
- Analyzes entitlement to uncover potential risks, identify threats, and uphold a least-privileged access strategy.
5. SSPM (SaaS Security Posture Management)
- Monitors and assesses security configurations ensures compliance, and protects data within SaaS applications.
- When combined with CASBs (Cloud Access Security Brokers) to provide both in-line and API protection for SaaS applications.
- Flags excessive access privileges.
6. CASB (Cloud Access Security Broker)
- Positioned between cloud service providers and end users to guarantee adherence to security policies and compliance measures.
- Examines the use of high-risk applications, automatically remediates threats, and adjusts access controls as needed.
- Has DLP capabilities, i.e., helps security teams protect sensitive information.
7. SASE (Secure Access Service Edge)
- A cloud-native architecture that combines network and security as service capabilities with security functions like cloud access security brokers, zero trust network access, etc., into one service.
- Rather than at the data center’s edge, the security perimeter extends to end users’ devices, i.e., users’ devices are inspected and sent to their destination from there.
You may need one or more of these working in conjunction to get closer to the Zero Trust model for your cloud environments.
Best Practices of Implementing Zero Trust Security in the Cloud with Network Intelligence
At Network Intelligence, we integrate the Zero Trust strategy into your cloud environment with the following best practices:
- We Assess Your Current Security Posture: We evaluate your existing measures and identify gaps in your cloud environment.
- Define Access Policies: We develop clear access policies based on Zero Trust principles and ensure that these policies are aligned with your organization’s needs and regulatory requirements.
- Integrate Right Tools and Solutions: We leverage cloud-native and third-party tools that support Zero Trust principles and integrate them to provide comprehensive protection and visibility.
Connect with our experts to learn how we transform your cybersecurity with our ADVISE framework that utilizes AI and helps you strengthen your cybersecurity posture.