Over the past decade, cloud computing has replaced the traditional computing infrastructure of nearly every major business, irrespective of its size and domain.
In fact, a study documents that nearly USD 62.3 billion was spent on cloud infrastructure globally in just the first quarter of 2022.
Despite heavy competition, Amazon Web Services or AWS still holds the lion’s share of the market. In the same study, AWS captured 31% of the total spend globally, indicating its position as the go-to name for cloud infrastructure in several domains.
From enabling operational efficiency to delivering on-time and disruption-free customer experiences, businesses of all sizes are leveraging multiple offerings from the AWS cloud ecosystem for building and growing their digital journey. However, despite its popularity, companies have several misconceptions about transitioning their digital infrastructure into AWS – the primary one being security.
AWS is not immune to security threats that occur due to misconfigurations and deliberate compromise of security standards by internal or external forces. As recently as May 2022, a major data breach was reported at Pegasus Airline, a Turkey-based global airline. A misconfigured AWS S3 bucket exposed nearly 6.5 terabytes of data pertaining to their crew as well as some core flight information.
There have been several other instances of security breaches and threats in the AWS landscape that involved huge business corporations and millions of customer records potentially compromised for data security in the process. The biggest takeaway lesson from almost all major security mishaps in AWS over the past years is that hackers and cybercriminals are able to exploit vulnerabilities in the digital infrastructure that enterprises often fail to catch while executing the building blocks of their cloud roadmap in AWS.
AWS’s Shared Responsibility Model is perhaps one of the most misunderstood cloud security models in history. Most customers think that AWS will handle all their cloud-security requirements and features by default. In reality, there is quite a lot of homework that enterprises must do themselves to stay protected when their digital infra runs on AWS.
Let us explore the top security best practices every enterprise must preach while leveraging AWS for their cloud needs.
Follow AWS Recommendations from the Start
AWS offers a decent amount of protection and threat mitigation opportunities for the cloud ecosystem built with the AWS Well-Architected Framework. It provides a key framework for building the most stable, secure, and efficient environment for cloud workloads. It also comes with domain-specific guidelines, design concepts, and other helpful resources that help to eliminate challenges in building cloud-native applications on AWS.
One of the core pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework is security, and following the framework allows enterprises to build cloud applications that naturally inherit AWS’s in-built security and protection abilities.
Strategic Improvisation of Cyber Security
Cyber security is no longer an optional investment for businesses. For enterprises that run their core digital services on the cloud, preparing an end-to-end cybersecurity strategy is pivotal for guaranteeing a secure cloud experience. AWS is no different in this regard.
Before hopping onto AWS with the entire digital infrastructure, companies must build a comprehensive cyber security strategy that ensures proactive as well as responsive end-to-end coverage for all digital initiatives. The strategy should ensure participation in security initiatives from all stakeholders, and clear guidelines or responsibilities must be established to ensure full-time protection.
Establish Control Levers
Standard measures that most enterprises use in securing their digital infrastructure, such as privileged access for different users, data access and storage policy enforcement, mandatory encryption for data in storage and transit, etc., can also be applied to the AWS ecosystem.
Along with key policies and access management techniques, enterprises can also conduct periodic audits of security measures to ensure that there is no room for errors in configuring or managing different AWS services.
Leverage Automation
Irrespective of the type of digital services that a business builds on the AWS cloud, there should be a heightened focus on implementing automated solutions that monitor, safeguard, and validate security credentials end-to-end.
Manual security support practices may not always guarantee full and reliable coverage. They may also be prone to judgmental or biased decision-making, which can result in heavy loss of credibility in the event of an incident.
However, selecting the right tool for automation requires strategic inputs from partners with expertise in cloud security initiatives. Evaluating capabilities and forming strategic alliances with technology partners like enreap can bring a competitive edge for enterprises in their AWS journey.
The Bottom Line
AWS is undoubtedly a key contender for any business to build its cloud landscape from the ground up. Ensuring that security is at the heart of all development activities is the key to growing sustainably and safely on AWS. This is where guidance from an experienced player in cloud security like enreap can prove to be a difference. Get in touch with us to know more.
