Moving to the cloud doesn’t have to mean exposing your organization to increased security risk. While security in the cloud can be complex, the right cyber security strategy ensures you’re taking a proactive approach in order to mitigate risk.
Mitigating risks and threats requires cloud solutions that are built with security at the forefront and an understanding of the methodologies cyber security experts employ.
Here’s an overview of how the best managed cloud companies achieve ironclad cyber security for their clients by adhering to the highest standards and taking a comprehensive security-first approach.
Taking a Security-First Approach
To put client security first, maintain a high bar and help meet compliance standards, a managed cloud company must take a comprehensive approach and offer a robust set of managed security services. This requires having a skilled team in place to implement and enforce system controls and procedures for safeguarding the integrity of the platform and infrastructure.
It’s also important to note that while the security of the cloud is the responsibility of the public cloud providers, the security in the cloud is not. Your organization may need a solution that complements or wraps around what you already have to protect your critical infrastructure and endpoints.
At Carbon60, the foundation of our security posture is a comprehensive Information Security Management System (ISMS) and we offer a range of cloud solutions with a robust set of fully managed security services, including SIEM, Endpoint Protection, Pen Testing, Vulnerability Management and more.
The process we use to determine and meet our clients’ security needs can serve as a helpful framework for assessing a potential managed cloud partner for your organization.
This framework is based on the U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) and is intended to guide, support and foster communications in risk and cyber security management.
The Framework Core includes five concurrent and continuous Functions—Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, Recover—which, together, provide a strategic overview of the cyber security risk management lifecycle.
#1. Identify
First, you need to understand what it will take to manage the cyber security risk to your organization’s systems, people, assets, data and capabilities. This requires being familiar with what the risks are within the specific context in which you’re conducting business, the resources needed to handle critical functions in your business and any related threats or vulnerabilities.
By identifying your needs, you can then focus and prioritize your cyber security strategy and risk management efforts.
A managed cloud provider should work relentlessly to ensure each client’s infrastructure and workloads are protected. They should offer everything from industry-leading endpoint protection tools to enterprise edge delivery, to a fully managed SIEM platform to ensure that clients have an environment that is protected using best-in-class tools and processes.
#2. Protect
It’s essential that your organization develops and implements the right safeguards that will allow you to deliver business-critical services while limiting and containing the impact of a potential cyber security event. Your managed cloud partner should offer a variety of consulting and professional services to help evaluate your internal IT and cloud security state.
From penetration testing to vulnerability scanning, the cloud partner’s cyber security team should work to make sure your internal IT team is aware of exposure and compliance deficiencies, providing thorough recommendations and support for remediation.
#3. Detect
Another critical component of cyber security in the cloud is to have the ability to discover and identify all occurrences of cyber security events in a timely manner.
It’s a must that the managed cloud company you work with ensures that cyber security events are detected quickly, minimizing the risk to your organization. The company should be able to ensure incidents are detected and mitigated as quickly as possible with a range of services, such as managed firewalls, managed WAF, data encryption and DDoS protection.
#4. Respond
The ability to respond appropriately means you can contain the impact of a potential cyber security incident. Your managed service provider should be working with you to determine the requirements for Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) services and include patch management procedures for zero day threats to complement their ongoing patching program.
This ensures that the appropriate SLA is established and that response planning processes are executed during and after an incident. As a client, you should have peace of mind that the necessary analysis is complete and that your cloud solutions partner will support you in managing communications with your stakeholders during and after an incident.
#5. Recover
Once a cyber security incident happens, your organization must be able to quickly implement activities to recover to normal operations, restore capabilities and services that were impaired and develop plans for resilience. Comprehensive quarantine and forensic services will ensure that your organization can return to normal operations as quickly as possible while deeper analysis is completed.
The managed cloud company you choose should have a variety of consulting and professional services to ensure processes and procedures exist, ensuring a timely recovery from a security incident.
Put Your Cyber Security Strategy First with Carbon60
Properly maintaining security in the cloud is no easy task. Your cyber security strategy should be implemented and upheld by experts with the knowledge, experience, and platform in place that will keep your organization protected.
At Carbon60, our managed cloud solutions are built with security at the forefront. At the foundation of our security posture is a comprehensive Information Security Management System, with a robust set of managed security services to complement your managed private cloud, managed AWS or managed Azure cloud solution.
We follow security best practices across any cloud model that we deploy for you, including wrapping around Carbon60’s hosted cloud platforms, public clouds or even your internal cloud for a holistic approach to protect your critical infrastructure and endpoints.
If your organization is looking for support with implementing a holistic and stable cloud cyber security strategy that adheres to the highest standards, contact us to learn more.