What Is Cloud Network Security?

Cloud network security encompasses the technologies, solutions, controls, and security measures that organizations deploy to defend public or private cloud networks from breaches and cyberattacks. Cloud network security solutions focus on securing data, applications, virtual machines, and infrastructure in the cloud from the risks of unauthorized access, data loss, data breaches, service interruption, and degraded performance.

While traditional networks and cloud networks face the same cybersecurity risks, IT teams tend to have less control over cloud networks, making it more difficult to have a complete view of the attack surface, identify security issues, block threats, and facilitate disaster recovery.

Because the resources within a private cloud are typically visible to and under the control of an organization and its IT teams, private clouds inherently offer a greater degree of network security. Public cloud providers offer their customers more limited visibility into their cloud environments, and the multi-tenanted nature of public cloud resources means that a security incident for one customer may inadvertently impact other customers using resources on the same physical server.

Security teams face a number of challenges as they seek to secure their cloud infrastructure and networks.

• Visibility. Cloud computing makes it easy for users throughout the company to spin up instances of compute, storage, and networking resources. While these on-demand resources help make the organization more agile, they also make it harder for IT teams to have a complete picture of all cloud assets as well as the threats against them.
• Misconfiguration. The self-service nature of cloud computing resources increases the chances that security controls for cloud instances will be misconfigured by users. These kinds of human errors are common in successful cyberattacks and data breaches.
• Vulnerabilities. The exceptional scalability of the cloud means that users can quickly deploy thousands of servers and applications in very little time. But as these cloud resources scale up, any vulnerabilities in the code will be replicated in new cloud instances or containers, exposing the organization to a range of threats.
• Collateral damage. Distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) can cause servers and cloud data centers to become sluggish or to crash. Even when a business has deployed highly effective DDoS mitigation solutions, its cloud resources may be impacted by a DDoS attack on another organization sharing resources on the same cloud server.
• Shadow IT. Many users employ commercial cloud services without the knowledge of their IT departments, creating a layer of shadow IT within the organization. Because these cloud resources are unmanaged and unprotected by standard security controls, the risk of a breach is higher.
• Speed of change. Cloud resources are constantly appearing and disappearing as users access and release the resources they need. While threat actors may easily find and exploit these short-lived resources, daily or weekly scans likely won’t be able to identify vulnerabilities or threats.

Effective cloud network security provides enormous advantages for organizations.

• Availability. Since organizations increasingly run business processes from cloud resources, network security can help to ensure reliable access to data and applications in the cloud.
• Reduced security risk. Superior enterprise cloud security  solutions can help defend an expanding attack surface and reduce the risk of a breach.
• Data protection. As data continues to expand at an exponential pace, cloud network security solutions can help to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of sensitive data stored in the cloud.
• Compliance. Best practices for cloud network security make it easier to comply with regulatory frameworks such as HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI DSS.
• Policy-based security. Cloud network security solutions make it easier to enforce and update granular security policies throughout a hybrid cloud or multicloud environment.
• Lower costs. Security solutions for preventing cyberattacks and data breaches can help organizations save millions of dollars each year.
• Automated monitoring. The best cloud network security solutions automate configuration and management to help keep pace with the rapid growth and change in cloud environments and to eliminate misconfiguration errors.
• Default data encryption. When data at rest or in transit is encrypted by default, security teams can better limit the damage of potential breaches or security incidents.

• Implement identity and access management (IAM) systems. Identity and access control solutions block unauthorized access and ensure that each user has permission to access only to the resources they need at any given time.
• Deploy continuous monitoring. Tools that continuously scan virtual and physical systems for potential security threats can help identify and remediate issues quickly.
• Train end users in security awareness. Many successful cyberattacks and data breaches are the result of human error. Training employees to understand and recognize threats can help to significantly improve security posture.
• Rely on Zero Trust networks. Under the Zero Trust security model, every user and application must be authenticated before being granted access to data and cloud assets.
• Segment networks and assets. Fine-grained security policies enable segmentation and microsegmentation solutions to neutralize attackers that have successfully breached an organization’s defenses, preventing threat actors from moving laterally within an environment to access high-value targets.

Network security in the cloud can be enhanced with a multilayered approach to security that includes an array of technologies and protocols.

• Cloud network security services. Best-of-breed services provide a comprehensive range of protections. These include technologies for anti-virus, data loss prevention (DLP), anti-bot protection, next-generation firewall (NGFW), intrusion prevention systems (IPS), application control, anti-malware, multi-factor authentication, identity and access management, and more.
• Unified management. IT organizations can overcome the challenge of security monitoring and threat management in the cloud by adopting cloud-based security solutions that integrate with on-premises security technology to manage the entire attack surface from a single pane of glass.
• Automated solutions. The scale and speed of change within cloud networks makes it impossible for security programs based on manual processes and human intervention to succeed. Automation is required to scale security monitoring and threat response with the same speed that organizations scale up their cloud resources.
• SSL/TLS inspection. Since much network traffic today is encrypted, organizations require technology that can inspect SSL/TLS traffic with minimal latency to detect and block dangerous connections.
• Secure remote access. The evolution to hybrid workplaces and mobile workforces means that a growing number of users must access cloud networks from remote locations. Solutions to securely manage identities and access can help to mitigate threats when users access the network from home or from unsecured locations.