Compliance
3 Major Benefits of Cloud Migration: Cloud Compliance
Part of a secure cloud migration strategy is ensuring compliance of all the moving pieces. Just like your cloud journey, compliance isn’t a final destination. Discover how to leverage cloud security tools to ensure compliance is met along the way.
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Related articles in the Cloud Migration series:
- Security Benefits of Cloud Automation
- Secure Cloud Migration 101
- Security Benefits of Enhanced Cloud Visibility
The unforeseen acceleration of cloud adoption due to COVID-19 led to many organisations scrambling to launch their services into the cloud to stay afloat. But these hasty transitions often come at the cost of neglecting compliance, which can result in not only hefty fines but damage to customer trust and reputation. It’s like a homebuilder hurrying to meet a deadline without double checking if everything is up to code and all the appropriate permits are filed. The deadline may be met—but if the roof collapses or a wall falls over, the consequences will be dire.
Governmental institutions have responded to the mass cloud adoption by developing new data privacy and regulatory laws, and compliance organisations continue to create more relevant frameworks for cloud computing. As more organisations migrate to the cloud, compliance standards and rules will evolve in tandem. That’s why it’s critical to implement a scalable security strategy that can grow throughout your migration and keep up with compliance requirements.
Keep in mind that being compliant doesn’t have to be a “do it or else” situation. Approaching compliance as an enabler to operational excellence can motivate security and development teams to play their part and bridge the gap. DevSecOps, anyone?
Let’s take a look at basics of cloud compliance and how to circumvent associated challenges.
Compliance 101
Compliance seems like its shrouded in mystery and requires a tonne of labour-intensive work but at its core, it’s quite simple. Basically, compliance is like a home inspection—it’s all about ticking the right boxes and making sure everything works properly and in order to prevent damage in the future.
In the case of cloud compliance, organisations must have the proper procedures in place to meet regulations applicable to their industry, such as GDPR, PCI DSS, HIPAA, ISO, and more. There are also compliance standards and frameworks like the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, CIS Benchmarks™, and AWS Well-Architected Framework that aren’t mandatory but are great tools to help you stay on the good side of the other guys.
While compliance laws and standards may differ across industries and regions, they often address the same challenges:
- Data transfer: Similar to the requirement of changing your driver’s licence when moving states/provinces, you must abide by the applicable national and regional privacy violations when moving your data.
- Data visibility: According to Flexera 82% of enterprises have a hybrid cloud strategy. While the hybrid cloud approach is popular, the distribution of storage can make securing it more complex. Make sure you have an eye on all your sensitive data—out of sight, out of mind is NOT the right approach here.
- Data security responsibility: Ah, the shared responsibility model. Your datacenter is just the host—you are responsible for securing it. Think of it like a safe in your home. If you keep it unlocked and you get robbed, you can’t sue the safe manufacturer. It’s 100% your responsibility to secure your data and therefore 100% your responsibility to be compliant in doing so.
- Data access: You wouldn’t give everyone you pass on the street a key to your home. The same applies in the cloud. Compliance regulations are designed to help you limit access to a least-privilege level so you can avoid a breach.
We briefly mentioned a few of the well-known compliance standards—let’s take a deeper look:
How to achieve continuous compliance
So, where do you start? The first step is identifying which security tool will best meet the needs of everchanging compliance standards which will keep up with your evolving infrastructure. As we discussed in our last article, a security services platform is ideal. Here’s how it can help you with the 4 compliance challenges we mentioned earlier:
Challenge #1: Data transfer ─ Localised protection
Unlike point products, a platform can be deployed across multi- and hybrid-cloud environments so you can run continuous scans and audits to ensure compliance, wherever your data may be.
Challenge #2: Data visibility ─ Enhanced insights
On-premises solutions only provide network-level insights, and your cloud service provider (CSP) can’t tell you the entire story due to privacy concerns. A platform enhances visibility across networks, security layers, and more so compliance issues can be identified and remediated quickly.
Challenge #3: Data security responsibility ─ Automated guardrails
Say good-bye to the tedious task of manually monitoring, configuring, and maintaining your systems to stay compliant. Automated operational controls also ensure rules are enforced at scale—so you stay compliant as your business grows.
Challenge #4: Data access ─ Centralised identity and access management (IAM)
One console for easy management of all your permissions, accounts, passwords, and policies. Think of it like a thermostat in your home—one place to control the temperature—versus radiators in each room that have to be individually monitored and managed.
The next step is identifying which platform is best. There’s no shortage of offerings available, but they’re not all equal. To achieve your compliance goals, look for specific features and functions, such as:
- Intrusion detection and protection for each sever across every type of cloud environment, examining all incoming and outgoing traffic for protocol and policy violations or content that signals an attack.
- Virtual patching is like stopping a leak with heavy-duty plumbing repair tape while you wait for a plumber to come out and actually fix it. In this case, a virtual patch provides an extra layer of security against vulnerabilities while you wait for the official vendor patch. This helps you avoid any additional exploits that try to target the vulnerability
- Integrity monitoring for critical operation system and application files (directories, registry keys, and values) to detect and report unexpected changes in real time.
- Malware prevention that leverages file reputation, behavioural analysis, machine-learning, and other advanced techniques to protect your systems
- Localised/specific compliance measures across the broadest range of industry, geography, and cybersecurity regulations and standards.
- Advanced threat intelligence as part of the platform for visibility into the entire threats landscape to protect against current and future threats.
Remember, you are solely responsible for securing and maintaining compliance for your data. You wouldn’t close your eyes and pick any home in a real estate flyer to purchase, so evaluate all your options carefully to make sure that your security and compliance needs will be met today, and in the future.
Automated compliance with Trend Micro Cloud One™ – Conformity
In the cloud computing world, conforming to compliance standards and regulations sets you up for success.
Trend Micro Cloud One™ – Conformity can help you follow the rules to avoid breaches and fines while driving innovation and bridging the gap. Conformity is one of seven security solutions that compose the Trend Micro Cloud One™ platform:
- Trend Micro Cloud One™ – Workload Security: Runtime protection for virtual, physical, cloud, and container workloads
- Trend Micro Cloud One™ – Container Security: Automated image scanning in your build pipeline
- Trend Micro Cloud One™ – File Storage Security: Security for cloud file and object storage services
- Trend Micro Cloud One™ – Application Security: Security for serverless functions, APIs, and applications
- Trend Micro Cloud One™ – Network Security: Cloud network layer intrusion protection system (IPS) security
- Trend Micro Cloud One™ – Conformity: Cloud security and compliance posture management
- NEW – Trend Micro Cloud One™ – Open Source Security by Snyk: Visibility and monitoring of open source vulnerabilities and licence risks
Check out how Conformity can help tackle the 4 compliance challenges:
Challenge #1: Data transfer
Monitor the compliance of all your cloud environments across different regions from one dashboard, so you can identify and remediate unwanted vulnerabilities and build to industry best practises.
Challenge #2: Data visibility ─ Enhanced insights
Conformity provides real-time visibility of your entire infrastructure through a single, multi-cloud dashboard, giving you true situational awareness.
Challenge #3: Data security responsibility ─ Automated guardrails
Auto-check against nearly 1,000 cloud service configurations across major CSPs, auto-remediate violations, and run scans against hundreds of industry best practise and compliance cheques. Customise audit reports with an endless of combination of filters and prioritise alerts so you can stay organised.
Challenge #4: Data access ─ Centralised IAM
Ensure that your IAM policies are enforced with several automated IAM configuration cheques. If any high-risk access violations are discovered, auto-remediation takes care of it.
Not only does Conformity address these common compliance challenges, but you can also:
- Remediate like a pro: You and the DevOps teams don’t have to be compliance experts to remediate threats. Every recommendation in Conformity is actionable—with clear step-by-step guides in our Knowledge Base
- Enable a DevSecOps culture: Infrastructure as code (IaC) means the most secure and compliant templates are deployed. Conformity also integrates seamlessly into your CI/CD pipeline with powerful APIs. Improve communication and collaboration between SecOps and DevOps teams by connected it to your favourite third-party communication provider like Slack, Jira, Microsoft Teams, and more.
- Monitor your progress: Track the evolution of your compliance posture within the Conformity dashboard. Your compliance progress is measured against the AWS Well-Architected Framework and based on the daily compliance score average. Now you can laser in on which areas need more support.
Make sure your cloud is up to code throughout your cloud journey with automated compliance cheques and remediation. Get started with a free 30-day trial of Conformity.
