70% of organizations now run hybrid cloud, using at least one public and one private cloud, as cloud adoption continues to accelerate across enterprises. That diversity of workloads, spanning on-premises and cloud, creates security risks that perimeter-based tools can’t protect. Firewall rules, cloud security groups, and SD-WAN policies typically reside in different consoles controlled by separate teams. This leaves businesses with siloed views of connectivity, access and risk.
Hybrid cloud security solutions help close that gap. They give security and network teams a way to understand, govern, and manage access consistently across cloud and on-premises environments.
The hybrid cloud security problem
Many organizations assume their cloud-native controls and on-premises security tools provide sufficient coverage. The problem is not visibility within individual environments. The problem is visibility across the boundaries between them, including identity and access management controls.
When workloads span AWS, Azure, GCP, cloud services, private cloud infrastructure, and traditional data centers, the attack surface becomes distributed. A security group that isn’t configured quite right in one platform can open an unintended pathway to a sensitive app in another, increasing the risk of data breaches. The firewall rule allowed in one business unit could violate segmentation needs in another business unit.
If your organization manages hundreds of firewalls, thousands of cloud security policies and is beginning to adopt SASE policies you likely struggle to answer simple questions like:
- Which systems are allowed to talk to other systems, and what other systems are they allowed to talk to?
- Does a proposed change violate policy?
- Did segmentation drift happen? If so, where?
- Do we have the proof we need to pass an audit?
Spreadsheets and manual reviews cannot keep up with IT infrastructure change velocity.
Zero trust for hybrid and multi-cloud according to NIST SP 800-207A is built around principles of continuous verification, Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), multi-factor authentication and segmentation. Achieving those principles requires visibility into actual connectivity between every cloud provider, security platform, and on-premises environment.
Hybrid cloud security solution capabilities
Organizations evaluating hybrid cloud security solutions should look for capabilities that support both risk reduction and operational efficiency.
Consolidated visibility
It should deliver a unified view into network connectivity behind firewalls, through cloud security groups, Zero Trust Network Access controls, cloud services, routers, switches, SASE platforms and microsegmentation controls. This will allow teams to answer questions about connectivity across the entire hybrid environment rather than hopping from console to console, supporting Zero Trust visibility requirements.
Policy management across vendors
Security policy and identity management controls should be applied consistently regardless of where workloads reside or how a cloud deployment is structured.
Uniform policy management reduces policy drift, supports Zero Trust segmentation requirements and eases regulatory compliance and audit readiness throughout hybrid cloud environments.
Change automation with compliance controls
Infrastructure moves fast. Security teams need automation that can analyze firewall and cloud changes before implementation.
Pre-change validation can reveal violations, excessive permissions, and segmentation flaws before hitting production and contribute to the prevention of data breaches.
Continuous security posture management
Maintaining an understanding of security posture shouldn’t be limited to periodic reviews
Visibility into exposure, access paths, and policy violations should be available to teams as their environments shift and change.
Attack surface discovery
Gain visibility across your entire attack surface. With attack surface analysis, you can identify unintended exposures such as unintentional connectivity, excessive permissions and lateral movement opportunities before they become security incidents.
Audit and compliance support
Hybrid cloud environments pose huge compliance challenges and security concerns. Security teams need to prove they’re enforcing policy, documenting change activity and providing audit evidence without logging dozens of hours each week on manual tasks.
Robust cloud network security spans these use cases as part of one operational framework. Products that only manage cloud-native security controls or just on-premises firewalls leave teams to cobble together visibility themselves.
Hybrid vs multi-cloud: the key distinction
Hybrid cloud security and multi-cloud security are closely related, but they address different operational realities.
Multi-cloud security focuses on workloads distributed across multiple public cloud providers.
Hybrid cloud security spans multiple public clouds and your own private hybrid infrastructure. This can include on-premises data centers, private clouds, and colocation centers.
Why does this distinction matter? Hybrid cloud deployments have unique risks that aren’t present when operating in the cloud exclusively.
If access controls aren’t tightly managed between public and private infrastructure, an attacker who breaches an internet-facing cloud workload could also move laterally to the private network. This movement from cloud-to-data-center is where many visibility gaps manifest.
Visibility and governance must extend across the entire hybrid cloud environment, including virtual private networks and the perimeter between cloud and on-premises infrastructure.
What to look for in hybrid cloud security solutions
Ask vendors about capabilities that extend to how you operate security across your real environment.
Depth across vendors
Visibility is just part of the support that vendors should be able to provide.
Your platform should be able to read/push, manage, validate and govern policies across all supported technologies.
A network model that reflects reality
Top-tier hybrid cloud security provides you with an accurate picture of your network topology and connectivity.
Without it, you can’t confidently answer questions about who has access to what, exposure levels, or what policies will affect which assets.
Vendor-agnostic automation
Automation should operate across cloud service providers, firewalls, SASE platforms, and microsegmentation solutions.
Manual processes that still touch significant portions of your environment create bottlenecks.
Policy as code and auditability
Security policy should be applied consistently and documented consistently.
Organizations must be able to demonstrate compliance and show controls were applied as intended.
AI-driven, network-based
AI-powered security capabilities can pinpoint exposures, assess the impact of policy edits, and suggest segmentation refinements. The insight is derived by working from live network data, instead of generating broad suggestions that lack environmental context.
Tufin’s approach to hybrid cloud security
Learn how you can attain full cloud security with Tufin’s multi-vendor platform built for visibility, policy governance, automation and risk reduction.
Our visibility solution, the Dynamic Network Connectivity Graph, provides a machine-readable, digital map of network connectivity across firewalls, cloud security groups, routers/switches and SASE platforms and microsegmentation security solutions.
Tufin’s Control Plane centralizes your network security policy across cloud and on-premises infrastructure so that you can manage it from one operational layer. Automated workflows validate every change before deployment so you can minimize manual reviews and ensure compliance requirements are being met.
AI generated recommendations help you understand risk by analyzing network data along with network connectivity context to identify risk, assess policy impact and simplify risk-based decision-making.
See how hybrid cloud convergence in multi-vendor environments looks from within. A unified cloud security platform starts with unified policy, visibility and governance managed from one pane of glass.
Conclusion
Hybrid cloud security is an enterprise-wide issue. Most organizations operate across complex hybrid ecosystems that span multiple cloud providers, security platforms, and on-premises environments. Policy, access, segmentation and compliance cannot be managed in isolation within each of those silos without increasing risk and headache.
Security teams need hybrid cloud security solutions that provide a unified approach to visibility, governance and change management across their entire network.
A platform that derives from accurate connectivity data, provides centralized policy control and leverages vendor-neutral automation allows security teams to have the insight and control needed to secure hybrid environments today and as they evolve.
Get a demo to see how Tufin provides visibility and control of hybrid cloud security across your environment.
Frequently asked questions
What is hybrid cloud security?
Hybrid cloud security refers to securing workloads, data, data encryption controls and access routes across both public cloud platforms and your private resources. Maintaining consistent policies, visibility and monitoring across your hybrid environment is critical to ensuring it stays secure.
Read our article on why hybrid cloud environments are hard to secure.
What should you look for in hybrid cloud security solutions?
Security solutions should ideally offer converged visibility, policy management, change automation, compliance assurance and attack surface management across clouds and on-premises infrastructure.
Look for solutions that support your real technology stack and have visibility into how everything connects across your environment.
Learn how Tufin expands network security into the cloud, from a unified platform.
What are the main hybrid cloud security features?
Enterprise-grade hybrid cloud security should include:
- A single pane of visibility
- Centralized policy management across vendors
- Automatic change validation
- Continuous posture assessment
- Attack surface reduction
- Audit and compliance
This should all happen transparently from cloud to on-premises and vice versa.
Learn how Tufin’s integrated control plane spans cloud and SASE.
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