Ways to Secure a Hybrid Cloud

“Cloud computing is a challenge to security, but one that can be overcome.” This quote makes it evident that despite the security challenges that cloud technology encounters, there are ways to overcome those challenges and ensure the security of cloud solutions. Prior to disseminating information regarding the main security concerns and the ways to secure a hybrid cloud, it is essential to have a proper understanding of a hybrid cloud.

Hybrid Cloud

A hybrid cloud is essentially a cloud solution which combines a private cloud with one or multiple public clouds through proprietary software and enables communication among the distinct services. A hybrid cloud enables organizations to have enhanced flexibility by shifting workloads between cloud solutions based on the change in costs and requirements. Hybrid cloud services are highly efficient as these allow businesses to have more control over their private data.

Any hybrid cloud environment uses a combination of an on-premises private cloud and third party public clouds that work in tandem. Greater flexibility and an increase in the number of options for data deployment are a direct result of the movement of workloads between these two platforms (private and public clouds). This enables a business to respond to not only its needs but also to computing changes more easily and quickly.

For this unique cloud computing environment of a hybrid cloud to be established, the availability of a public IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) is needed. Moreover, a private cloud needs to be created, either through a cloud provider or on-premises. Additionally, there has to be a good quality WAN (Wide Area network) connectivity between the private and the public clouds. Last but not the least, the security of the hybrid cloud need to be ensured.

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Returning to our topic of hybrid clouds, these provide the flexibility and the customizability that is offered by data centers, along with the convenience that public clouds offer. Since hybrid clouds are customizable, their security requirements vary from business to business, depending on the particular hybrid cloud environment.

Major Hybrid Cloud Security Concerns

More and more businesses are migrating to a hybrid cloud environment, and this has increased security concerns with regard to hybrid clouds. The major security concerns for hybrid clouds have to do with data compliance, data leaks, scalability and cross-cloud policy management.

Prior to moving their data and applications to a service provider’s cloud, businesses need to make sure that they are aware of all the compliance laws with regard to their data. Moreover, data visibility has become a major issue when it comes to data security. It becomes easy to lose data’s track when proper data visibility is not ensured. Additionally, all the procedures, tools and practices that are meant for security should be scaled for growth. A company that fails to do so, can face security related challenges due to a lack of security architecture that scales itself to the company’s infrastructure resources.

The policies and procedures with regard to a company’s private data center might not transfer well to the public cloud. This leads to a challenge in creating, configuring and maintaining uniform security related policies and procedures across the entire network. This involves not only firewall rules and IPS signatures but also user identification/authentication etc.

Hybrid Cloud’ Security Measures

Despite the complexity of hybrid cloud environments, there are numerous hybrid cloud security related practices as well as solutions that can be utilized by businesses to ensure the security of such environments. Apart from choosing a reliable cloud service provider, the other security measures that should be taken care of are mentioned below, in no particular order.

• Isolation of critical infrastructure- Since businesses store their sensitive data on the cloud, access to such data should be restricted to only those who require it.
• Data encryption- Data, that is in transit as well as that which is stored, should be encrypted to ensure enhanced security. Businesses also need to ensure that the data that is being used and processed by a cloud application is adequately protected. In a nutshell, data should be protected throughout its life cycle.
• Data backup- Enterprises must back up their data, physically as well as virtually. This is a proactive security measure that ensures protection against malicious attacks and such system failures that can cause data loss either permanently or temporarily. Data backups ensure that data is available at all times.
• Ensuring the security of endpoints- A cloud infrastructure does not eliminate the requirement for endpoint security. Usually most of the cyberattacks and threats to security begin at the endpoint level. Hence, businesses should implement adequate endpoint security measures with the aid of comprehensive solutions for security.
• Assessment of risks- Enterprises must carry out risk assessment and analysis constantly and update the practices related to it. This aids an enterprise in not only reviewing its cloud provider’s security capabilities as well as compliance status but also enables it to evaluate its own internal development tools. A company must keep tabs on its internal as well as its public cloud’s security and monitoring related tools and controls along with its operation management. Such constant monitoring enables a company to have enough time to modify these tools and controls when there is a requirement for it.
• Following a plan for continuity and recovery- It is essential that businesses have a backup plan for operations to take place seamlessly if any problem occurs, such as data center power outages, services’ disruption etc. Image-based backups can be included in a recovery plan for restoring or recovering data.

Conclusion

Every security issue that is related to a hybrid cloud has a solution. It is important for enterprises to not only ensure proper implementation of security measures for known security concerns but also to be proactive with regard to security solutions, in order to have a secure hybrid cloud environment that functions efficiently, seamlessly and can be managed easily.

Source: https://www.htshosting.org/knowledge-base/cloud-hosting/60/ways-to-secure-a-hybrid-cloud