From On-Prem to Cloud: The Complete AWS Security Checklist
Cloud computing has redefined how organizations handle “business as usual.” In the past, organizations were responsible for deploying, maintaining, and securing all of their own systems. However, doing this properly requires resources, and some organizations simply don’t have the necessary in-house talent to accomplish it. With the cloud, it’s now possible to rent resources from a cloud service providers (CSPs) and offload the maintenance and some of the security workload to them.
Just as the cloud is different from an on-premises deployment, security in the cloud can differ from traditional best practices as well. Below, we provide an AWS auditing security checklist that includes the most crucial steps for implementing network security best practices within a cloud environment.
AWS security step-by-step
Get the whole picture
Before you can secure the cloud, you need to know what’s in the cloud. Cloud computing is designed to be easy to use, which means that even non-technical employees can create accounts and upload sensitive data to it. Amazon does what it can to help, but poorly secured cloud storage is still a major cause of data breaches. Before your security team can secure your organization’s footprint in the cloud, they first need to do the research necessary to find any unauthorized (and potentially insecure) cloud accounts containing company data.
Define an AWS audit security checklist
After you have an understanding of the scope of your organization’s cloud security deployments, it’s time to apply an AWS audit checklist to them. The purpose of this checklist is to ensure that every deployment containing your organization’s sensitive data meets the minimum standards for a secure cloud deployment. There are a variety of resources available for development of your organization’s AWS audit checklist. Amazon has provided a security checklist for cloud computing. Use these resources to define a baseline for a secure AWS and then apply it to all cloud resources in your organization.
Improve visibility
A CSP’s “as a Service” offerings sacrifice visibility for convenience. When using a cloud service, you lose visibility into and control over the underlying infrastructure, a situation that is very different from an on-premises deployment. Your applications may be deployed over multiple cloud instances and on servers in different sites and even different regions, making it more difficult to define clear security boundaries. Guardicore Centra’s built-in dashboard can be a major asset when trying to understand the scope and layout of your cloud resources. The tool automatically discovers applications on your cloud deployment and maps the data flows between them. This data is then presented in an intuitive user interface, making it easy to understand applications that you have running in the cloud and how they interact with one another.
Manage your attack surface
Once you have a solid understanding of your cloud deployment, the next step is working to secure it. The concept of network segmentation to minimize the impact of a breach is nothing new, but many organizations are at a loss on how to do it in the cloud.While securing all of your application’s traffic within a particular cloud infrastructure (like AWS) or securing traffic between applications and external networks is a good start, it’s simply not enough. In the cloud, it’s necessary to implement microsegmentation, defining policies at the application level. By defining which applications are allowed to interact and the types of interactions that are permitted, it’s possible to provide the level of security necessary for applications operating in the cloud.In an attempt to ensure the security of their applications, many organizations go too far in defining security policies. In fact, according to Gartner, 70% of segmentation projects originally suffer from over-segmentation. With Guardicore Centra, the burden of defining effective policy rules no longer rests on the members of the security team. Centra’s microsegmentation solution provides automatic policy recommendations that can be effectively applied on any cloud infrastructure, streamlining your organization’s security policy for AWS and all other cloud deployments.
Empower security through visualization
The success of Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions demonstrates the effectiveness and importance of collating security data into an easy-to-use format for the security team. Many data breaches are enabled by a lack of understanding of the protected system or an inability to effectively analyze and cross-reference alert data.Humans operate most effectively when dealing with visual data, and Centra is designed to provide your security team with the information that they need to secure your cloud deployment. Centra’s threat detection and response technology uses dynamic detection, reputation analysis, and policy-based detection to draw analysts’ attention to where it is needed most. The Guardicore incident response dashboard aggregates all necessary details regarding the attack, empowering defenders to respond rapidly and minimize the organizational impact of an attack.
Applying the AWS security checklist
Protecting your organization’s sensitive data and intellectual property requires going beyond the minimum when securing your organization’s cloud deployment. Built for the cloud, Guardicore Centra is designed to provide your organization with the tools it needs to secure your AWS deployment.
To find out more, contact us today or sign up for a demo of the Centra Security Platform and see its impact on your cloud security for yourself.
