What is Hybrid Cloud Security?
Hybrid cloud security is the protection of the data, applications, and infrastructure associated with an IT architecture that incorporates some degree of workload portability, orchestration, and management across multiple IT environments, including at least 1 cloud that is public or private. Hybrid clouds offer many opportunities including the reduction of the potential exposure of your data. You can keep sensitive or critical data off the public cloud while still taking advantage of the cloud for data that doesn’t have the same kinds of risks associated with it.
Can Hybrid Cloud Enhance My Security?
A hybrid cloud architecture can often provided enhanced security. This type of set up lets enterprises choose where to place workloads and dat based on compliance, audit, policy, or security requirements. While the various environments that make up a hybrid cloud remain unique and separate entities, you can still migrate between them by using encrypted APIs. The separated yet connected nature of this type of architecture allows companies to run critical workloads in the private cloud and less sensitive data in the public cloud. This minimizes data exposure and allows companies to create a flexible IT plan.
Challenges and Components of Hybrid Cloud Security
Like all cyber security projects the main challenge is protecting your data. The overall goal is to limit data exposure for your organization through encryption. This data will be either in transit or at rest at different moments in time. We will need a variety of security to limit data exposure during these different states. The next focus is on compliance and governance. A lot of our clients work in a highly regulated sector like healthcare, finances, or government so the cloud infrastructure presents some additional considerations. Our team knows exactly how to check your distributed environments to make sure they are compliant. We also know how to implement custom or regulatory security baselines and how to prepare for security audits.
The components of hybrid cloud security much like computer security in general consist of three main components the physical, technical, and administrative layers. Physical controls are mainly for securing your actual hardware. Examples include locks, guards, and security cameras. The technical controls are protections that are designed into the IT systems themselves. Some examples of this are encryptions, network authentication, and management software. Many of the strongest security tools for hybrid cloud infrastructures are technical controls. Last but not least we have administrative controls which are programs to help people act in ways that enhance security such as training and disaster planning. We have found that training your administrators correctly provides a very important layer of defense against potential attacks.
How Cosaint Cyber® Can Help
If you need to create a new Hybrid Cloud system or are simply looking to ensure your current system is as secure as possible we can help. We run a full diagnostic on your existing systems to provide you more insight to the potential threats and give you steps to follow to create the most secure cloud based system possible. Our consultants can help guide you to create a secure Hybrid cloud based system regardless of your current implementation.