Hybrid Cloud Security Across Multi-Cloud Environments

Hybrid cloud security architecture and operating models

Hybrid cloud security is the set of policies, technologies, and controls deployed to protect applications, data, APIs, and infrastructure spanning multi-cloud environments, on-premises resources, and private cloud deployments. Hybrid environments allow organizations to run customer-facing cloud applications and workloads on public cloud infrastructure while storing regulated or sensitive workloads in a private cloud data center behind the corporate firewall.

Enterprises running a mix of cloud-native and legacy applications can experience cloud security risks associated with misconfigurations, incomplete coverage, and visibility gaps between cloud-based security solutions and on-premises infrastructure. Many organizations also rely on shared responsibility models, in which cloud providers are responsible for securing cloud infrastructure while internal security teams protect workloads, security posture, and data protection through cloud security configuration management.

Hybrid cloud security controls usually encompass network security, workload security, data protection, and identity security using third-party IAM services, firewalls, security information and information and event management systems (SIEM), endpoint detection and response (EDR), and other tools. Security operating models can include Zero Trust security segmentation models, hub and spoke network connectivity, security orchestration, and centralized policy enforcement to minimize hybrid cloud security risks.

Internal security teams are responsible for providing cloud security visibility into cloud environments such as AWS, underlying cloud infrastructure, VPN connections, and distributed cloud resources. Security teams must ensure consistent cloud security policies, compliance, scalability, and disaster recovery (DR) requirements while defending against cyber attacks, malware, and ransomware threats. As hybrid cloud security becomes more complex, some organizations are rethinking their cloud security strategy and operating models.

Hybrid cloud security challenges and operational risk

Organizations risk losing visibility into their hybrid cloud environment as it grows to include public cloud, private cloud, and on-premises infrastructure. Security teams try to maintain different security policies, firewall rules, IAM settings, and access controls across various cloud providers, cloud platforms, and traditional technology. This can lead to blind spots in coverage, policy enforcement delays, and misconfigurations that leave data and cloud resources vulnerable.

Operational risk increases as applications shift between cloud accounts, cloud-native technologies, data center operations, and remote endpoints. When DevOps, cloud engineering, and security teams operate without coordination on policy management, users often end up with too many permissions, and access controls are all over the place.

Compliance assessments also become challenging when teams must search through disparate tools to review policy updates, firewall changes, and cloud resources. Security and operational risk increase as teams use security tools, security information and event monitoring (SIEM) platforms, and cloud computing processes without centralized orchestration or real-time visibility.

Your organization’s attack surface also expands as you adopt new APIs, cloud platforms, remote employees, and containerized workloads. The potential impact of a ransomware, malware, or abusive login attack can increase when you don’t have uniform security measures or Zero Trust architecture to protect your multi-cloud environment. Organizations are strengthening their security strategy and operations governance with tools such as Tufin Orchestration Suite to simplify and unify cloud security, while also learning how to measure cloud security effectiveness. Tufin Orchestration Suite can help you simplify and unify security orchestration, automation, and posture management across your hybrid cloud security solution and cloud resources. Businesses that are looking at modernization efforts can also study what worked for Booking.com as they tackled scalability, compliance standards, consistent security practices, and operational risk.

Hybrid cloud security solutions and best practices

Customers with mature hybrid cloud security programs are typically focused on centralized policy governance, consistent visibility into their environments, and aligned policy enforcement across all public clouds, private clouds, and on-premises infrastructure. Security teams are starting to implement automation, security orchestration, and real-time threat detection to minimize risk associated with manual configuration and security policy sprawl. Other teams are implementing least-privilege access controls and continuous compliance monitoring to minimize wide-open permissions, auditing gaps, and the manual processes that often hinder security teams and operations teams.

We commonly see customers implement CSPM, CNAPP, SASE, Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions, SIEM, firewall policy orchestration to help teams align security policies and security remediation across AWS, Azure, GCP, and their on-prem environments. Some other best practices to secure your hybrid cloud environment include Zero Trust network segmentation and authentication, cloud-native threat detection, disaster recovery, and centralized management of firewalls, VPNs, APIs, and cloud infrastructure. Implementing these hybrid security best practices can help security teams strengthen their security posture, mitigate risk, and better protect their sensitive data in hybrid cloud and multi-cloud environments.Security automation can help teams simplify their hybrid cloud security programs. By automating security operations and standardizing on centralized management processes, security teams can scale operations, ensure compliance standards are met, and remediate misconfigurations. Teams should look to solutions like Tufin Orchestration Suite to streamline policy review, change management, and security orchestration between cloud environments and siloed network teams. Read through our blogs on cloud security, and familiarize yourself with this guide to hybrid cloud security to enhance your security strategy and security policy management.

As hybrid cloud environments become more common, we’ll likely see standardization around policy governance, continuous security monitoring solutions, and security automation. Security standards and consolidated visibility will be critical to lowering the risk of a ransomware/malware attack and scaling security teams.

Conclusion

Most hybrid cloud environments have ballooned beyond the typical centralized governance and management of network resources as organizations have strived to meet growing business needs with cloud-native applications and adoption of services running on legacy infrastructure. The reality is that many businesses lack cohesive security strategies that span their distributed cloud environments, resulting in increased operational risk and exposure as a result of compliance gaps and overlapping security policies across cloud resources, IAM identities, and distributed network security solutions.

Having security visibility and policy enforcement centralized, coupled with dynamic, real-time threat detection and security controls that can scale with your business, is key to securing your hybrid cloud. Not only will this help you meet disaster recovery, data protection and compliance requirements, but it can help you do so with decreased risk of exposure to ransomware, malware and other threats. Standardizing your approach to security automation, SIEM workflows and hybrid cloud governance will equip security teams to maintain policy and operational consistency as your cloud environment becomes even more complex. Get a demo to learn how centralized orchestration can help you standardize policy management and security automation across your distributed environment.

Frequently asked questions

What are the biggest hybrid cloud security challenges for enterprise environments?

Disconnected cloud security policies, blind spots in visibility, over-permissions and sprawling compliance requirements across multiple cloud providers and on-premises environments are headaches many enterprises know all too well. Hybrid cloud security challenges also increase when cloud operations and security teams manage policies through disconnected workflows, creating blind spots around cloud resources, IAM systems, and network security operations.

Additional operational guidance appears in Strengthen and Unify Cloud Security with Tufin and Cloud Security Configuration Management.

How do hybrid cloud security solutions improve compliance and policy management?

Enterprise cloud security and governance models benefit from hybrid cloud security strategies that enable organizations to limit policy drift, automate compliance validation, and gain better visibility into distributed environments. Enterprises are turning to automation and orchestration to limit misconfigurations, increase audit readiness, and standardize more secure controls across hybrid IT infrastructure.

Additional governance strategies appear in Cloud Security Compliance and Culture of Continuous Compliance Through Automation.

How does automation drive hybrid cloud security operations?

Security teams are trying to keep up with policy updates, infrastructure expansion across multiple clouds and handle the influx of security risks happening in real-time without completely depending on manual processes. By automating these tasks, teams gain better visibility as hybrid clouds scale, increase time to operate and drive consistent security controls for geographically dispersed cloud computing.

Additional operational examples appear in Accelerating Network Access Troubleshooting and Navigating Cloud Security Metrics.