Keeping Your Cloud Data Safe: What You Need to Know – Source: securityboulevard.com

Why is Cloud Data Safety a Paramount Concern?

With the increasing movement of organizations to the cloud, ensuring data security has become a top priority. It’s a well-known fact that organizations thrive on data. But what if this data falls into the wrong hands due to weak cloud security? The results can be catastrophic, leading to financial losses, damaged reputations, and regulatory penalties. Therefore, creating a secure cloud environment is crucial to prevent data breaches.

Navigating the Complexity Surrounding Non-Human Identities and Secrets Management

Among the multiple facets of cloud data safety, managing Non-Human Identities (NHIs) and secrets stands out as a critical yet complex process. But what exactly are NHIs? In simple terms, NHIs are machine identities that function in cybersecurity. Formed by coupling a secret (encrypted password, token, or key) with the permissions given to that secret by a destination server, managing NHIs isn’t easy.

But why is this important? It’s because managing NHIs and their secrets involves securing not only the identities (the ‘tourist’) but also their access credentials (the ‘passport’). Furthermore, it requires monitoring their behaviors with extreme precision. This holds vital relevance, especially for organizations operating in the cloud.

Just like discovery and inventory of NHIs can be a daunting task, so are ensuring policy enforcement and creating an audit trail for regulatory compliance. But despite these complexities, effective NHI management can deliver benefits in abundance.

Key Advantages of Effective Non-Human Identities Management

• Reduced Risk: By identifying and mitigating security risks proactively, NHI management aids in lowering the chances of data leaks and breaches.
• Improved Compliance: NHI management aids organizations in meeting regulatory requirements, ensuring policy enforcement and maintaining audit trails.
• Increased Efficiency: Automating the management of NHIs and secrets allows security teams to focus on strategic initiatives, making the process more efficient.
• Enhanced Visibility and Control: It provides a centralized view of access management and governance, making it easier for organizations to navigate through the complexities.
• Cost Savings: By automating secrets rotation and decommissioning of NHIs, it aids in reducing operational costs.

Despite these advantages, many still fall in the trap of secret scanners. These point solutions offer limited protection as they fail to cover all lifecycle stages, from discovery and classification to threat detection and remediation. Therefore, adopting a holistic approach towards securing machine identities and secrets is the way forward.

Embracing a Holistic Approach towards Cloud Data Safety

Rather than relying on point solutions that offer fragmented security, embracing a holistic approach towards cloud data safety is the need of the hour. This involves complete NHI management that addresses all lifecycle stages, from discovery and classification to threat detection and remediation. By doing so, organisations get insights into ownership, permissions, usage patterns, and potential vulnerabilities, leading to a context-aware security.

An example of this could be how a certain NHI behaves within the system, which can be a great indication of its potential threat capability. For instance, phishing attacks often target NHIs, and having a comprehensive overview of all NHIs within a system can help mitigate such security risks.

But this isn’t all, prioritization of NHI remediation in cloud environments is another critical component of the holistic approach. As the name suggests, it involves prioritizing remediation efforts based on the severity of potential security risks.

Stepping into a Secure Cloud Future

Ensuring cloud data safety will continue to be a top priority for all organizations. And within this, effective management of Non-Human Identities and their secrets will hold a critical place. So, whether you are a seasoned cybersecurity professional or a CISO, prioritizing NHI management can be the key to secure your organization’s cloud future.

Addressing the Mismatch between Security and R&D Teams

One crucial aspect of maintaining cloud data safety is to bridge the gap between security and R&D teams. Quite often, conventional security measures fail to align with the rapid pace of technological change within an organization. This mismatch can result in security gaps, leaving the system vulnerable to attacks.

In such scenarios, NHI management proves instrumental by providing seamless integration between security and R&D teams. It ensures that the security measures are up-to-date, keeping up with the pace of technological advancements that are part of system operations. This alignment becomes even more important for organizations that heavily leverage cloud-based operations, making them a potential target for security breaches.

Thus, the strategic importance of NHI management isn’t just about protecting the organization from immediate threats, but also about the long-term sustainability of the cybersecurity plan.

Potential Cost of Ignoring NHI Management

As the statistics reveal, the cost of data breaches has been increasing consistently over the years. According to a report by IBM, the average cost of a data breach globally in 2020 was $3.86 million. Incorporating NHI management into an organization’s cybersecurity strategy goes a long way in preventing significant financial and reputational damage.

Role of NHI Management across Industries

With data becoming the backbone of modern enterprises, the strategic importance of NHI management becomes prevalent across a variety of sectors – from financial services, healthcare, and travel to DevOps and SOC teams.

In the financial sector and healthcare industry, where sensitive data is in abundance, an efficient NHI management can be instrumental in preventing significant security breaches. For travel and hospitality services, data security is paramount in maintaining consumer trust and business reputation.

For DevOps, secrets form an inherent part of the development and deployment process, thereby making secrets management a crucial aspect. For SOC teams, effective NHI management can provide contextual insight into the network, assisting threat detection, and incident response.

NHI Management: The Best Way Forward

Looking at the continually evolving landscape of data, the strategic importance of NHI becomes even more prominent. With advancements in technology, the internet’s democratization and the cloud’s rise, data threats have become increasingly sophisticated. In such a scenario, conventional cybersecurity approaches with surface-level security won’t be sufficient. Utilizing a comprehensive and pragmatic approach to NHI management becomes the need of the hour.

Effective NHI management puts an organization in control of both the machine identities and secrets. The process provides an end-to-end understanding of these identities – right from their discovery and classification to the monitoring of their patterns, thus enabling organizations to stay one step ahead of potential threats.

Through the implementation of a detailed and holistic approach towards NHI management, organizations can significantly enhance their data protection capabilities. While this may involve retrofitting a new working structure within an existing system, the long-term benefits and secure cloud future assure it to be a sound strategic move that combats modern cybersecurity threats.

Linking cyber security professionals and the CISOs to the broader workings of the organization, a robust NHI management strategy stands as a beneficial tool in harnessing the power of data in a safe and secure manner.

This is why the question is not if you should consider adopting NHI management, but how quickly can you implement it to secure your digital future?.

The post Keeping Your Cloud Data Safe: What You Need to Know appeared first on Entro.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Entro authored by Amy Cohn. Read the original post at: https://entro.security/keeping-your-cloud-data-safe-what-you-need-to-know/