What is Enterprise Cloud Security?
Cloud computing allows companies to outsource the management of some portion of their IT infrastructure stack to a third-party provider. Depending on the cloud services model used – Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), etc. – the cloud provider controls a greater or lesser portion of the infrastructure stack.
However, under the cloud shared responsibility model, moving to the cloud does not mean that a cloud customer hands over all responsibility for their cloud management and security. Under each cloud service model, the cloud provider and customer each have responsibility for some infrastructure layers and may share responsibility for the transition point between them.
Cloud service providers commonly incorporate a range of configuration settings and security controls into their offerings. However, these solutions may not meet enterprise security needs and are limited to the cloud provider’s platform, increasing the complexity of implementing on-prem and multi-cloud security.
Enterprise cloud security is designed to provide consistent protection to all areas of an organization’s IT infrastructure. This includes deploying enterprise-grade security protections that cover all on-prem and cloud-based environments and enable scalable threat prevention and security management.
What are the Main Capabilities of Enterprise Cloud Security?
Enterprise cloud security is designed to provide an organization with consistent, enterprise-grade security across all of its IT infrastructure. To accomplish this goal, an enterprise cloud security solution should include the following capabilities:
- Multi-Cloud Support: Most organizations have multi-cloud deployments, using a range of cloud models across multiple security providers. Implementing and enforcing consistent security requires a cloud security solution that supports all major cloud platforms.
- Unified Security Architecture: Deploying point security products to implement enterprise security across on-prem and multi-cloud deployments can result in a complex and unmanageable security architecture. Enterprise cloud security unifies threat prevention across all of an organization’s IT infrastructure, providing consistent security visibility and management capabilities.
- DevSecOps Capabilities: Shifting security left by integrating it earlier in the software development lifecycle (SDLC) decreases the cost and impacts of software vulnerabilities. Enterprise cloud security solutions can help to automate and integrate DevSecOps tools – such as configuration and security posture management – into the continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipeline.
- Supply Chain Security: Third-party code and dependencies can contain vulnerabilities that impact the security of the applications that use them. Enterprise cloud security solutions can monitor dependencies for vulnerabilities, enabling organizations to identify and close these security gaps.
- Adaptive Security Controls: Enterprise cloud security solutions can profile application behavior and use this information to implement adaptive security policies. By enforcing zero-trust boundaries and blocking attempted exploitation, these solutions reduce cloud security risk.
- Runtime Threat Prevention: Not all vulnerabilities can be found and fixed before software is deployed. Runtime threat prevention capabilities – such as zero-trust security, runtime code analysis, and web and API security – can help to identify and block exploitation of cloud-based corporate applications.
- Security Posture Management: Cloud environments include a variety of security settings that, when misconfigured, are the most common cause of cloud security incidents. Automated security posture management helps an organization to rapidly identify and remediate security misconfigurations that would otherwise place it at risk.
Main Benefits of Enterprise Cloud Security
Enterprise cloud security enables companies to implement enterprise-grade security across their entire IT environments, including complex multi-cloud and hybrid cloud infrastructure. Some of the key benefits that an enterprise cloud security solution provides include the following:
- Unified Security Visibility: Enterprise cloud security solutions provide security teams with a unified dashboard for monitoring and managing cloud-based and on-prem infrastructure. By eliminating siloed security and context-switching, enterprise cloud security speeds threat detection and response.
- Security Automation: Enterprise cloud security solutions commonly incorporate automation for common tasks and threat remediation. By automating repetitive tasks and incident response efforts, these solutions improve the scalability of security efforts and minimize the duration and impact of cyberattacks.
- Reduced Security Vulnerabilities: Integrating security into CI/CD pipelines reduces the probability that software vulnerabilities will reach production. As a result, an organization and its customers face a lower risk of cyberattack.
- Zero-Day Threat Prevention: Detection-focused security strategies provide attackers with a window to take advantage of their access before a response begins. Prevention-focused security with the ability to identify zero-day attacks eliminates risk to the organization.
- Regulatory Compliance: Various regulations and standards, such as HIPPA, PCI-DSS, and NIST CSF/800-53, mandate the implementation of certain security controls and configurations. Enterprise cloud security supports the deployment of these controls throughout an organization’s IT infrastructure.
Securing Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure with Check Point CloudGuard
Cloud infrastructure provides business-critical application hosting and data storage for many organizations. However, complex multi-cloud deployments can be difficult to secure for a variety of reasons, including the limited capabilities of vendor-provided security solutions and configuration options. To learn more about designing and implementing a cloud security architecture for your cloud deployment, check out Check Point’s Cloud Security Blueprint.
Check Point CloudGuard is a cloud-native enterprise cloud security solution with integrated advanced threat prevention as a service. CloudGuard can identify and block even zero-day attacks against corporate IT resources, providing robust protection against novel and evolving cyberattacks. Find out how CloudGuard can provide benefit your organization’s cloud security posture by visiting our cloud network security page. Then, feel free to see the capabilities of CloudGuard for yourself by signing up for a free demo today.
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