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Cloud vulnerabilities: what CISOs need to consider

With the digital transformation and an acceleration of modern technology, there has been a vast increase in security issues that chief information security officers (CISOs) have had to face. This is particularly true when it comes to the security of on-premises software and cloud migration.

On-premises software is where a company installs the software locally, using their servers and devices. Cloud is where this software is hosted via a vendor’s server and accessed online. Most businesses now use cloud in some capacity. However, there is an inherent blind trust that is placed in service providers, which is highly concerning. Once in the cloud, there is a critical dependency on the provider, this brings into question the resiliency risk that comes with cloud service providers and the security they have in place.

There are multiple entry points between cloud providers and clients, which means a larger attack surface and a higher number of vulnerabilities that attackers can take advantage of. For instance, take the strike against edge cloud provider, Fastly. In this attack, not only was the company impacted, but so were all its users, including the UK government, the Financial Times, the Guardian and New York Times, Verge, Reddit and Twitter, just to name a few. Each business had issues with their websites following the attack and according to the BBC, an hours’ worth of downtime could cost a single organisation up to US$250 000.

“When so much infrastructure is placed on a single source, on a single content delivery network or cloud hosting company, the weight can make the source buckle and often break. Despite this fact, businesses often forget to protect themselves contractually with SLAs and resiliency regarding disaster recovery procedures”, says Eleanor Barlow content manager, SecurityHQ.

In order to increase their security posture, CISOs must consider the following eight questions in order to ensure that their infrastructure will not collapse in the case of a security issue.

1. How to improve speed of detection from days/weeks/months to seconds and minutes. See www.securitysa.com/*shq1 for more information (redirects to www.securityhq.com/services/managed-detect-response/).

2. How to improve speed of response from days/weeks/months to seconds and minutes.

3. How to move from 9-5 monitoring to round-the-clock, 24/7/365.

4. How to detect complex threats rather than simple security events.

5. How to use skilled expertise rather than using data based on a basic understanding of threats.

6. How to visualise risks and gain complete visibility of potential risks and attacks. See www.securitysa.com/*shq2 for more information (redirects to www.securityhq.com/services/vulnerability-management-service/).

7. How do I move from no/little standardisation and lack of controls to complete OLA, SLA, KPI and metrics enforced?

8. How to move from ad-hoc expenditure to clear operational costs.

To learn the answers to these questions, as businesses continue their journey of digital transformation and cyber threats continue to rise, read SecurityHQ’s latest whitepaper Top 8 CISO Challenges Solved at www.securitysa.com/*top8 (redirects to www.securityhq.com/whitepapers/top-8-ciso-challenges-solved).

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