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Over the last 18 months, cloud application use has skyrocketed, with the average organisation with 500-2,000 employees now using 805 different cloud applications.
This is a staggering level of new risk for CISOs to get their heads around. At the same time that cloud use has grown, so too have the efforts of malicious actors to target cloud applications which are all too often poorly secured and present a constant opportunity of unsecured data to compromise.
The challenge can feel insurmountable, with employees bringing cloud applications into the organisation through shadow IT faster than we can lock them down one by one, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are five tips for CISOs looking to get a handle on cloud security:
1) Partner within the business to build in security by design
With cloud proliferating through the organisation, security teams need to partner closely with IT and ensure that security is never a last-minute consideration. Many organisations are already restructuring and combining teams, in which IT and security sit alongside each other with shared KPIs
For security to be built in ‘by design’ it cannot, by definition, be bolted on, and this is one of the reasons that cloud security requires a cloud-native platform. Most organisations realise the limitations of their appliance-based architectures the minute they try to secure data, applications, and users that sit outside of their perimeter. Security by design takes a data-centric architectural approach, acknowledging that there is no longer a perimeter where users, devices, and data can reside safely. Instead, users, devices and data are now dispersed and move freely – in and out of whichever cloud apps and services the business requires – and these apps and services need security that exists wherever they are.
This approach is often dubbed a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) strategy; placing security in the cloud, making it integral to IT architecture, and executing in-line controls. By taking this architectural approach to security you don’t have to build and customise new security controls cloud app by cloud app.
2) Understand your data flows
When you acknowledge that your data is no longer static, but that it moves constantly around third-party cloud services, it becomes very apparent that a CISO needs a much greater understanding of their organisation’s data flows. An organisation should know the movements of its data, have visibility of the categories of data at play, and understand the profile of the cloud application in order to decide what controls are necessary.
A data-centric view of security makes sense when you consider that regulation and risk calculations are commonly data-centric. Visibility and an understanding of your