Cloud security and the future of the Internet of Things
In the cloud computing world, security teams must be as agile as possible. This means using active monitoring tools to lock access points and forecast demand.
In the cloud, as in the physical world, its changing threat dynamics are surpassing services, users and applications to new targets of the Internet of Things, from closed-circuit televisions to refrigerators, and even unmanned aerial vehicles. This new model will bring many challenges to organizations. With this in mind, Gartner, a research organization, recently predicted that by the end of 2018, 25% of enterprise data traffic will bypass enterprise security controls and flow directly from mobile devices to cloud computing.
So what does this mean for modern organizations? Where should businesses focus to ensure their cloud and IT environments? The new digital challenge is that people's configurations and workloads will face risks, requiring out of the box thinking and new security policies. Here are four examples to express these thoughts:
More focus on terminals and users
Today, some enterprises have adopted the next generation of new endpoint protection (EPP) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) systems. This will need to provide new methods to protect users, mobile environments, and how data interacts with endpoints around the advanced capabilities of sandbox, cloud integration, and intelligent threat analysis.
Trend Technology, CrowdStrike, CarbonBlack, Bit9 and other companies are involved in the EPP/EDR market. They introduced a new generation of endpoint security, integrated with the overall hosting security solution, used machine learning and security AI to view files with incorrect formats, in-depth metadata analysis, and even powerful offline functions. This contributes to the security of various devices used by mobile users and still consumes digital content from their organizations.
Security automation and orchestration
By adopting automated IT systems, enterprises can incorporate security architecture in 2017. Through secure workflow automation, enterprises can intelligently control large-scale settings and environmental changes involving multiple data centers and global locations. In other words, enterprises can use automated tools to ensure that they have the correct security policies, rather than manual processes and configurations. The huge impact here is that enterprises can have heterogeneous security systems that are automatically managed by a single system.
Another major factor in automated security controls affects users. Today, there are powerful user control automation systems that can integrate human resources and business processes. Organizations often work with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of contacts. Managing user identities is not always easy. Many times it is a manual process, which needs to be stopped. Malicious accounts, user loss, misconfigured permissions and forgotten access control are all security vulnerabilities. Today's automated software tools allow organizations to load and unload entire user subsets. In addition, they will integrate with the HR system and even remind administrators and HR staff when creating or deleting new users.
Internal security lifecycle management
This belongs to the security control of manual processing category. New tools around security incidents and information management (SIEM) enable administrators to better control their security ecosystem. Remember, it is no longer a firewall. People already have application firewalls, security analysis, network forensics and many other tools to help maintain infrastructure security. Aggregating logs and events is critical to capturing issues before they become major issues. In addition, enterprises can control updates, patches, and see which systems need to be updated. Even in large organizations, Cisco or Juniper devices that have not been upgraded and patched can still be found. What happens in the cloud ecosystem?
Testing, cloud to cloud security, and file watermarking
Cloud computing and virtualization make it easier to test new types of security systems. If an enterprise plans to deploy a new cloud or use an extended data footprint, it should pay attention to new technologies, which are designed to help cloud computing vulnerability management, compliance, visibility, application security, and even penetration testing. There are other technologies that will review request sources and help further lock down data sent down through authentication, watermarking, and advanced access rights management. The key is that emerging security technologies will specifically target new cloud and physical threats. Don't be afraid to test these systems or work with partners to help guide the way.
The advice provided by experts is that organizations should maintain agile cloud security. This means using active monitoring tools to lock access points and predict requirements. No environment is always 100% safe. The goal of the enterprise should be to create as much environmental visibility as possible and develop contingency plans for as many security incidents as possible.
