Many digital companies and enterprises are taking a holistic approach when it comes to managing sensitive workloads on public cloud systems [1]. In order to make sure that the safety and security of the systems remain intact they would have to manage security and compliance consistently and without any imperative delay. Compliance is one of many reasons as to why many organizations hesitate to fully commit to the cloud systems and the resources that it provides access to [3]. However, if a consistent and fully thought out preview of how compliance can be achieved is provided to these businesses then they would be able to capitalize on the profits through agility and using resources that the public cloud provides access to.
But still, to this date, a complete understanding of how compliance can be achieved is needed, and when that is done the companies might be able to work closely with these rules to work in the ever-changing regulatory environment [3].
Cloud security and compliance challenges
When it comes to addressing the compliance requirements, security would also be discussed as a separate topic as the controls required to achieve compliance are implemented under the persistent understanding of security [1]. Many challenges come to light that may alter the performance of the businesses when dealing with ongoing security concerns and thus obstructing the settings of compliance systems [3]. Therefore, it is necessary that you as an organization is aware of the following challenges;
Operational consistency
When it comes to operations there shouldn't be any margin available for inconsistency because it means that you are becoming inefficient in every walk of life. These rules apply to the vast world of business and not only the digital market, suppose if you are manufacturing, importing, or trading on international forums, standardizing the basic operation is a must-have and it would increase your operational output too. You can only apply the compliance functions and operational security to the cloud systems when you have prepared them within the house and these are functional in every aspect of your digital business.
Enforcing security as well as responding to the audit requests would become easier if the consistency of operations could be made paramount [3].
Advanced threats
Cyber threats are extremely potent which means that cybercriminals have a sophisticated array of technology and professional experience which they can use to make data exploits, conducting zero-day attacks, and breaching the security of your organization for the sake of retrieving information. These cybercriminals use a mix of different systems to make these exploits for either financial or political gains while there are others who are always jumping on the next victim and focus on making a quick score. Ransomware is the most common attack vector that is being used these days and without proper compliance measures and regulations stretched all over the public cloud systems, it seems rather impossible to dodge this bullet.
Information visibility
Historically the occurrence and place of origin of the data was a little simpler to trace, of course, it would be in a data center where else would it be? That is no longer true, with the consistent booming of better and improved technologies and the abundance of mobile devices and the use of public cloud systems it is a little difficult to trace the origin of data and that is also one of the reasons why the corporate information is also being dispersed along with other information leaks. Getting a single view of the data is more challenging than ever and additional regulatory requirements involving the global data residency should be imminently implemented if the further loss is to be avoided [2] [3].
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The top four public cloud security threats: the leading threats cited by respondents was a misconfiguration of the cloud platform (68%), up from third in 2019’s survey. This was followed by unauthorized cloud access (58%), insecure interfaces (52%), and the hijacking of accounts (50%).
The main security barriers to cloud adoption: respondents named a lack of qualified staff (55%) as the biggest barrier to the adoption – up from fifth place in last year’s survey. 46% cited budget constraints, 37% data privacy issues, and 36% a lack of integration with on-premises security.
Existing security tools struggle with public clouds: 82% said their traditional security solutions either don’t work at all, or only provide limited functions in cloud environments, up from 66% in 2019 – highlighting an increase in cloud security issues over the past 12 months.
Public cloud is riskier: 52% of respondents considered the risk of security breaches in public clouds higher than in traditional, on-premises IT environments. Just 17% see lower risks, and 30% believe the risks are about the same between the two environments
Cloud security budgets to rise: 59% of organizations expect their cloud security budget to increase over the next 12 months. On average, organizations allocate 27% of their security budget to cloud security.
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Compliance and Cloud Security Best Practices
Storing important business data into a business cloud doesn't come off without added risks and compliance issues. And the margin of risk is ever stronger if your handling team is new and doesn't bear any expertise in doing so [2]. The on-premises definition of the data is a little different as compared to ensuring security within the cloud, cloud service providers have different tools and processes for the sake of ensuring cloud security but still, it is a lot different from the on-premises security practices.
With the evolution of public cloud systems and its merging with private cloud, edge cloud and distributed/shared cloud systems it has become even more complex and the risk of making mistakes has increased gradually too [4].
Take a cloud security-first approach
The first thing that you need to do is to take a security-first approach so that you can achieve a state of continuous cloud compliance. It will lower costs, minimize risks, and would also reduce the complexity of cloud operations. A security-first model maintains continuous monitoring and management of cloud security risks and threats. Following are some of the things that can be achieved with leveraging tools and automation that;
Monitors the security threat through the real-time discovery
Understands the security through deep insights
Threats would be neutralized through automated policies, processes as well as controls
Robust reporting capabilities are produced when measuring security and compliance results.
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Consider the platform
In a security-first approach, you require a multi-cloud platform that continuously monitors and manages the cloud security against your set policies and compliance standards which would provide;
A complete and unified view of all the cloud products and accounts
Generation of the regular compliance reports
Identification, prioritizing, and then the effective remediation of compliance risks
End to end lifecycle compliance monitoring
Audit reports that will effectively demonstrate the round the clock security management and compliance-related issues
Cloud governance from a single pane of glass
There are tools and software systems that will provide you with consistent screenshots of any cloud security and compliance issues [2]. These issues are monitored, tracked, and compiled in the form of infographics on the dashboard to give you a bright picture, these summaries would provide you with everything that you need to know about the state of your cloud security.
These are the best security practices that you can implement for making sure that compliance and security of the systems on cloud technology are persistent and continuous.
References
[1] https://www.ibm.com/cloud/blog/achieving-security-and-compliance-on-ibm-cloud-for-financial-services