Top 4 Hybrid Security Challenges To Tackle in 2022

When was the last time security teams had an “easy” year? Certainly not the previous year. Neither this decade nor this century. Every year in recent memory has seen a notable and new cyber attack.

It doesn’t take a fortune teller to predict that 2023 will be more of the same. If anything, the speed and magnitude with which threats and problems are compounding will only broaden the danger picture. Whilst also overwhelming current enterprise defenses faster than ever before. Cybercriminals will not relent, and neither should security teams’ efforts to safeguard networks, systems, applications, and data.

IT environments for a rising number of enterprises include a mix of public cloud services, private clouds, and on-premises infrastructure, with the latter becoming a smaller and smaller part of the mix. For security teams, hybrid cloud deployments can increase complexity, restrict visibility, and necessitate various logging and monitoring methodologies.

According to the research, emerging technologies like containerization, virtualization, and edge computing are increasing cloud investment. The largest market sector is still software as a service (SaaS).

Companies are employing a variety of cloud services rather than just one type to achieve their business objectives. Businesses can benefit from unparalleled flexibility thanks to the hybrid cloud approach. They can scale up or down capacity as needed. As well as migrate data and workloads to and from any number of cloud services. Hybrid cloud also poses cybersecurity threats that, if ignored, might result in considerable losses.

Here are the top five hybrid cloud security challenges that security leaders and teams encounter with the hybrid cloud approach, as well as solutions to them.

Added Complication, Lowered Visibility

Companies’ IT environments are getting significantly more complex in terms of administration and security. This is due to the deployment of more public cloud services and private cloud capabilities. They lose sight of what’s going on in this environment if they don’t take steps to monitor service utilization.

According to Chris Kanaracus, research director for dedicated and hybrid cloud infrastructure/services at research firm International Data Corp; a hybrid environment naturally introduces more complexity. There are just so many more “windows and doors” to lock, and more security maintenance; patching, etc. We’ve seen numerous high-profile media stories regarding data leaks caused by human error; such as incorrectly configured storage buckets on public clouds.

Misconfiguration and inadequate change control, as well as limited cloud usage visibility, are among the top threats to cloud computing in 2022, according to the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), an organization that defines standards, certifications, and best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment.

A Dearth of Knowledge and Skills

The significant scarcity of cybersecurity expertise is well known. Many firms are struggling to fill a range of roles. However, locating and hiring security professionals who also understand the cloud raises the bar significantly. This knowledge gap in cloud security can expose organizations to risk, and they must find ways to close it before it’s too late.

One approach is to provide both internal and external training to support a complex hybrid cloud environment. It involves a collaborative effort from business lines, cybersecurity leadership and team, training, and human resources to build a curriculum and multi-modal training courses for continuous skill advancement.

Another critical component in hybrid cloud architecture is strong governance. A clearly defined duty matrix and operational models can help to alleviate concerns and facilitate effective governance. Monitoring metrics provide insight into the success of various security teams as well as the effectiveness of controls deployed.

Security Responsibilities Shifting

In a public cloud environment, the duty of putting in place controls surrounding perimeter security, infrastructure, and virtualization gradually passes to cloud providers. Therefore, understanding the changing security shared responsibility model is critical.

In some circumstances, organizations attempt to extend private cloud security measures and technology stacks to public clouds, which fails. Moreover, In a hybrid cloud environment, the lack of a clearly defined (responsibility assignment matrix) and/or operational model allows for unabated threats and ignored capabilities. These impede the firm from scaling and fulfilling business goals.

Despite the significance of understanding and adhering to the shared responsibility model that comes with the use of cloud services, not all businesses do so.

Mismatches in Network Security

Organizations continue to face challenges in network security, as existing vendor products supporting private clouds may not be adequate for public clouds. Organizations use containers for seamless transition and management across hybrid clouds, and failing to comprehend subtleties such as service mesh and API security can lead to container vulnerability and further exploitation.

The ultimate goal is to create custom data dashboards for CEOs to assist them to understand the residual risk and impact of cloud services. Meanwhile, operational teams will have complete insight throughout the landscape into sophisticated persistent threats.