Introducing Zero Trust in the cloud is the key to safeguarding your applications and workloads.
Businesses have acknowledged that migrating resources to the cloud is vital to maintaining competitiveness, driving innovation, and facilitating a better user experience. But protecting borderless cloud environments that can be accessed from anywhere over the Internet also presents some challenges, with organisations requiring a robust security strategy to keep proprietary data out of the clutches of cybercriminals.
The Zero Trust framework is designed to reinforce cloud security through the principle of ‘never trust, always verify’, applicable to all connections that originate from both inside and outside of the traditional network perimeter. This makes it an ideal strategy for modern businesses that have moved their operations into the cloud. In theory, following its simple mantra will keep an organisation always protected from cyber threats. However, in practice this is not always as straight forward as it sounds. To stand a better chance of success, here are five common mistakes to avoid when implementing Zero Trust in the cloud.
1. Don’t treat Zero Trust as a one-time project
Picture the scenario, you’ve successfully implemented Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) across all cloud environments. You have established which users can access which resources, which machines can communicate with each other, as well as which cloud providers you want to be leveraging. However, we wish we could tell you to put your feet up and rest easy, but Zero Trust is not a one-time project, a misconception that a lot of practitioners fall victim of.
Cloud environments are in a constant state of flux. A company may want to add more applications to their cloud environment, or user access may need to be revoked or granted. No matter the situation, the decisions that your company makes have an impact on the cloud architecture, meaning that your Zero Trust blueprint must be flexible. Zero Trust is a long-term strategy that needs to be constantly adapted and moulded to fit the changing needs of the business.
2. Ignoring the user experience
It may seem a slight contradiction, but the level of security in a Zero Trust model cannot be too scrupulous. Otherwise, this is detrimental to the user-base. Zero Trust is about making the work of a cybercriminal as difficult as possible, but that shouldn’t extend to your employees, and so user experience must be balanced against rigorous security.
User experience often goes under the radar, as it is not a priority for network security professionals. But imagine how frustrating it is for users to resupply credentials over and over to access resources and applications? When introducing Zero Trust in the cloud, you need to consider a balanced approach, one that appreciates the needs of the user. Identity and Privilege Access Management policies, such as Single Sign On (SSO), grants relevant access based on one set of credentials and removes the need for future login prompts.
3. Lack of API security
It’s important that connectivity and an efficient data flow exists between the various systems and applications within your network, something that is facilitated by Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). But how can interoperable APIs exist within a Zero Trust framework?
You should never overlook API security when implementing Zero Trust in the cloud, despite its complexity. Because they represent the primary means of communicating data, APIs are potential attack vectors for cybercriminals to target. If unsecured, assailants can breach APIs and move laterally across the network. For Zero Trust to stand any chance of being successful in the cloud, securing APIs with policies such as rate limitations and restricting access to only known IP addresses can go a long way in preserving cloud security.
4. Never assume cloud providers handle all security
The logic that you can neglect security once workloads have been moved to the cloud seriously undermines the integrity of Zero Trust in the cloud. Think of the cloud provider as the landlord of a shared living space. Your business is one of many tenants living in the shared living space of the cloud provider, where you have been allocated a room to store your applications and IT resources. But who is responsible for overall security?
In what is standard practice, the shared responsibility model is a set of guidelines which delineates the division of security duties between the cloud provider and the customer. There are variations in terms of the cloud provider and the type of cloud service, which includes Infrastructure, Platform, and Software-as-a-Service. But as a rule of thumb, the cloud service provider is responsible for securing the underlying architecture, including physical datacentres and hosts, whilst companies are accountable for securing the resources they store in the cloud. Therefore, stringent vendor assessments and vulnerability checks should preface any migration to the cloud to help you identify potential security gaps before making a final commitment.
5. Putting full trust in Zero Trust
Zero Trust will not prevent every attempted data breach on its own. Some network security professionals believe Zero Trust is infallible, but with so many attack methods available to cybercriminals, they will inevitably find and exploit vulnerabilities somehow.
Zero Trust must work alongside other security strategies, so if the worst-case scenario happens and a breach does occur, the impact will be mitigated. Because AI is being leveraged to facilitate cyberattacks, businesses must also utilise AI to keep in touching distance of cybercriminals. AI-powered security solutions like phishing detection and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) can increase your cybersecurity posture by automating responses to any perceived threat.
How to successfully implement Zero Trust in the Cloud
Implementing Zero Trust in the cloud is a challenge and a huge task for IT teams. Securing the network perimeter is challenging enough, but when incorporating complex cloud environments that have no physical boundary, it becomes even more difficult to implement Zero Trust.
To avoid the mistakes we’ve highlighted, you must account for all devices and users within the corporate network and introduce limited access control. A successful Zero Trust implementation is predicated on strategic planning and when applied to cloud environments, the level of security must be even more granular to safeguard the scaling of applications.