As more organizations make the shift towards hybrid and cloud environments, security teams need a new way to keep their cloud workloads safe from cyber threats. Cloud services offer organizations a scalability that isn’t possible with on-premise infrastructure as well as a boost to efficiency; however, the shift also comes with unique considerations when it comes to security. Outside the scope of your typical cybersecurity practices, cloud computing requires organizations to secure containers, virtual machines, serverless workloads and Kubernetes whether the cloud is public, private, or a hybrid of both.

While the cloud has hugely supported a modern, digital means of collaboration and operation, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, its adoption also adds cyber risks that are associated with it. Organizations can mitigate these risks by implementing a holistic security strategy focused on workload protection to protect their cloud environments.

Defining a Security Strategy for Cloud

The increase of remote work has given rise to cybersecurity threats to both cloud and hybrid workspaces. With new attack techniques plentiful in the vast threat landscape, threat actors are taking advantage of the larger attack surface as organizations start to store more data and offer services in the cloud.

Defining a security strategy for cloud starts with discovery based on an organizations’ core business objectives, principles, and priorities. No security strategy that is out of alignment with an organization’s goals ever proves to be successful – how can you fully protect what you can’t see? Before beginning the migration into cloud, invest time and effort in mapping out the key aspects of your organization, your attack surface, and their relationship to the cloud security you need.

• What are my organization’s most critical assets/data?
  • What compliance regulations or requirements does my cloud need to meet in terms of storage?
• What are the most critical cloud threats my organization faces?
  • What processes and technology does my organization have in place to secure those threats?
• What are the immediate and long-term impacts should my organization face a successful cyberattack on the cloud?
  • What incident response plans and processes does my organization have in place?
• What internal and external vulnerabilities does my organization’s cloud have?
  • What is the likelihood of these vulnerabilities being exploited?
  • What processes and technology does my organization have to address these vulnerabilities?

When not managed properly, cloud computing can actually end up exposing organizations to opportunistic cyberattacks. Clouds are particularly vulnerable to misconfiguration, Active Directory vulnerabilities, insider threats, and supply chain attacks. The likelihood of these threat activities targeting the cloud will continue to grow in number, so having a strong cloud security strategy puts preventative measures in place against breach and data loss.

Choosing the Right Cloud Security Technology

Planning, building, and enforcing the organization’s cloud strategy will be a main area of concern for CISOs and security teams. A large part of that strategy will be the direct result of choosing the right security solution for an organization’s cloud setup. The right solution for an organization’s cloud needs to be scalable, easy to manage, and able to defend against increasingly complex cloud-related cyber threats.

These are the key aspects that a cloud security solution must address:

• Visibility Management – Cloud-based environments are easy to scale up in response to growing data volumes, which makes them a popular solution for organizations wanting to improve their flexibility and agility. As easy as it is to spin up new workloads in the cloud though, lack of visibility and misconfiguration of those workloads could leave them exposed to potential security vulnerabilities. A foundational step is to maintain deep visibility into what is running in your cloud at all times to limit exposure and reduce risk.
• Integration Compatibility – Larger organizations with established tech stacks must think about tool compatibility and the quality of their integrations. Especially for organizations who have hybrid environments, existing tools must be able to integrate with the cloud. Having seamless integration between your cloud and your security tools ensures nothing operates in isolation and that data is synchronized in a reliable exchange.
• Real-time Detection – With enough time and resources, threat actors frequently meet their goals. This makes fast detection the keystone in preventing actors from inflicting critical damage to your cloud environment. With the time between initial intrusion and lateral movement getting shorter, quick detection time is a crucial element of an organization’s defenses.
• Autonomous Response – A solution that employs artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can be leveraged very effectively against modern threat actors from attacking your cloud. AI technology augments security teams by automating the interpretation of attack signals, prioritizing alerts and incidents, and adapting responses based on the scale and speed of the attacker.
• Data Compliance – Cybersecurity and compliance go hand in hand. Cloud security technology should help organizations meet the requirements of the regulation frameworks they abide by and allow them to use, store, manage, transmit, and protect sensitive data in accordance with applicable controls. This includes, but is not limited to, data encryption and a robust endpoint protection (EPP) solution.

Singularity Cloud | SentinelOne’s Approach to Securing the Cloud

SentinelOne enables organizations to protect their endpoints across all cloud environments, public, private, and hybrid, through Singularity Cloud. With thousands of accounts spread across multiple clouds, organizations need the right security in place for their cloud infrastructure. Singularity Cloud works by extending distributed, autonomous endpoint protection, detection, and response to compute workloads running in both public and private clouds, as well as on-prem data centers.

Within the current cyber landscape, cloud workload protection platforms (CWPP) are the final line of defense in a multi-layer cloud security strategy. Organizations rely on CWPP’s like Singularity Cloud for autonomous, real-time detection as well as remediation of complex threats at the VM and K8 pod level with no need for human detection. Further, Singularity Cloud’s runtime protection of containerized workloads identifies and kills unauthorized processes such as malware, ransomware, and more.

• AI-Powered Cloud Workload Protection – Behavioral AI detects unknown threats such as zero-day exploits and indicators of compromise consistent with novel ransomware and then quarantines them in real-time. Singularity Cloud protects runtime containers without container interference for Linux, Windows servers, and VMs.
• Enterprise-Grade EPP & EDR – Get full endpoint detection and response as well as container coverage in one SentinelOne agent. Singularity Cloud allows for complete container visibility with one agent per node and without pod instrumentation.
• Enterprise Management & Deployment – Choose to auto-deploy Kubernetes Sentinel Agent, a component of Singularity Cloud to EKS, AKS, and GKE clusters, or Linux and Windows Server Sentinel Agents to AWS EC2, Azure VM, and Google Compute Engine.

Conclusion

Opportunistic threat actors attacking clouds count on the fact that cloud networks are large, complex, and require in-depth configuration and management. This means it is critical for organizations to choose the right cloud security platform in support of their overarching security strategy. SentinelOne is here to help you improve your cloud security plan and fuse autonomous threat hunting, EDR capability, and security together to fit your business. Contact us today or book a demo to see how Singularity Cloud brings agility, AI-powered security, and compliance to organizations globally.