Seven Essential Practices to Enhance Cloud Security and Stop Threats

January 2, 2025
Seven Essential Practices to Enhance Cloud Security and Stop Threats

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, enterprises have increasingly turned to hybrid environments, complex network architectures, and multicloud infrastructure. With more than 72% of organizations using multicloud applications, visibility and context can be a challenge, posing difficulties for security professionals trying to block sophisticated threats. Within such vastly distributed environments, it’s crucial to secure digital assets and prevent attackers from exploiting any cloud misconfigurations. Bad actors continue using AI to expand their attack surface and exploit cloud networks. However, organizations can adopt multiple practices to keep these attackers at bay effectively.

1. Minimize the Organization’s Cloud Attack Surface

Reducing the attack surface doesn’t necessarily mean cutting down on the number of cloud applications in the enterprise. Instead, it involves incorporating AI-based behavior profiling into security strategies, promoting proactive mitigation of potential threats. By adopting AI, the security operations center can effectively reduce the attack surface, automate critical workflows within applications, mitigate potential attacks, and remediate successful breaches. This proactive stance allows the organization to remain resilient against the evolving tactics deployed by cyber adversaries.

Crucial steps include continuous monitoring of all active cloud services and applications, identifying and eliminating unnecessary or redundant ones. Each application and service should undergo regular reviews to determine whether they contribute to an expanded attack surface. Abandon outdated or less secure applications since they present exploitable pathways for malicious actors. Integrating advanced threat detection and response tools can provide the necessary insights to minimize exposure and bolster the overall cloud security posture.

2. Leverage AI for Predictive Remediation

Artificial intelligence plays a pivotal role in identifying and responding to threats quickly. Modern cloud security postures should leverage ML-based user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) tools. These tools effectively identify anomalous behavior across the network, facilitating rapid investigation and automating responses to mitigate and remediate attacks. AI-driven solutions help detect potential threats before they manifest into full-blown security incidents by analyzing patterns and identifying deviations from normal behavior.

AI offers predictive remediation capabilities, which allow security professionals to anticipate vulnerabilities and preemptively address them. Incorporating AI-powered systems into the security framework supports a proactive approach, rather than reactive, ensuring a robust defense mechanism. Implementing AI tools that analyze vast datasets in real time helps to spot anomalies faster than traditional methods, providing an edge in the ongoing battle against sophisticated cyber threats.

3. Implement Identity Mapping to Enhance Cloud Security Threat Detection

As enterprises migrate to the cloud, the importance of identity security has eclipsed endpoint security. Security professionals are now focusing more on identifying who is behaving anomalously, rather than just how or where these behaviors occur. Cloud activities mapped to individual users provide crucial contextual data, enabling security personnel to trace actions back to specific individuals. Understanding who accessed particular resources, data, and applications is vital for accurate threat detection and response.

Implementing identity mapping helps to detect insider threats, unauthorized access, and potential account compromises more effectively. It also enhances visibility across the cloud environment, allowing security teams to monitor user behavior and respond to suspicious activities promptly. By incorporating robust identity management and access control mechanisms, organizations can secure critical assets and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.

4. Depend on a Centralized Platform to Investigate Threats Across a Multicloud Environment

When a threat emerges in a cloud environment, assessing its impact across a distributed or multitenant surface can be challenging. A centralized platform for threat investigation provides security personnel with a unified response center capable of automating workflows and orchestrating with various cloud applications. This centralization reduces the mean time to resolve (MTTR) incidents and enhances overall efficiency in responding to security threats.

A centralized platform offers a comprehensive view of the entire cloud infrastructure, making it easier to identify potential vulnerabilities and respond to incidents. It integrates multiple security tools and data sources, facilitating seamless communication and collaboration among security teams. This centralized approach minimizes gaps in the security infrastructure and ensures a coordinated response to complex threats, keeping the organization’s digital assets secure.

5. Correlate Network Events with Cloud Activities

Correlating data from network and cloud services is essential for identifying patterns, relationships, and potential threats. Enterprise correlation rules for cloud security data must be carefully designed, tested, and implemented. Thoroughly correlating network events with cloud activities helps defense systems detect and analyze anomalies. This approach includes scrutinizing unusual traffic patterns, anomalous account usage, and unauthorized access to cloud storage.

Security professionals must gather and cross-reference access and security logs from various cloud applications to identify attempts at data exfiltration. Correlating these logs can reveal compromised user accounts and potential data breaches. For instance, investigating potential customer data exfiltration from a cloud-based CRM tool might involve correlating CRM logs with email and team communication tool logs to detect any unauthorized data transfers.

6. Eradicate Shadow IT and Regularly Perform Cloud Security Risk Assessments

The rise of shadow IT, where employees use unsanctioned applications and services, poses a significant security threat. Unauthorized applications can introduce vulnerabilities and lead to data breaches. Security personnel should proactively identify and eliminate shadow IT by conducting regular cloud security risk assessments and audits. This bottom-up approach allows CISOs to gain visibility into granular components and assess the overall security posture comprehensively.

Conducting frequent cloud security risk assessments helps identify potential vulnerabilities and ensures that security measures remain effective. Regular audits contribute to a security culture that prioritizes compliance, reducing the risks associated with shadow IT. By implementing strict policies and monitoring employee use of cloud services, organizations can mitigate the risks and ensure a secure cloud environment.

7. Establish a Well-Defined Incident Response Plan

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses have increasingly adopted hybrid environments, complex network architectures, and multicloud infrastructure. With over 72% of organizations utilizing multicloud applications, achieving visibility and context has become challenging. Security professionals face significant hurdles in blocking sophisticated threats, as these distributed environments can be difficult to manage. It’s essential to secure digital assets and prevent attackers from exploiting any cloud misconfigurations. Cybercriminals are now leveraging AI to broaden their attack surfaces and to exploit vulnerabilities within cloud networks. To effectively combat these threats, organizations must adopt multiple security practices, including regular audits, continuous monitoring, encryption, identity and access management, and employee training on security protocols. By implementing these measures, they can better protect their digital assets and ensure the integrity and security of their cloud environments.

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