As many organisations move to the cloud, they are start asking: is one enough?
This thinking is the driver behind the rapid increase in Multi-Cloud deployments. Multi-Cloud offers the most flexibility, letting organisations mix and match cloud services to meet their specific requirements. The desired benefits are increased agility and cost-optimisation.
Security is one of the biggest challenges in Multi-Cloud adoption and requires special consideration. In Multi-Cloud, data flows in and out between different public clouds. The attack surface has just significantly increased, thus increasing the risk of a breach and loss of crown jewels, the data! The traditional silo security approach is no longer enough.
The question, is how do you mitigate against the increased security risk of Multi-Cloud?
Multi-Cloud security needs restrictions based on identity and access rights. That is the core principle of multi-cloud security. We need to identify resources, connecting to our Multi-Cloud, and then give it the appropriate access rights. Without identity access management, it would be difficult to secure multi-cloud due to the many moving parts interacting with each other. This drives the need for a common approach similar to management and governance. Security needs to be deployed holistically across the different environments as a single pane of glass.
It is also important to understand that security should be closely integrated with to your cloud governance. Security is about who has access, where they access from, what they access and what are they are allowed to do once given access. Governance on the other hand, is about placing limitations on the resources users are able to leverage. For example, if a user tries to access a resource multiple times on the same day, they’re considered in violation. This can be logged and they be prevented fro accessing the resource. The governance kick in, when Once a user access the resources, where governance can place limits around how a user leverage resources.
This is easier said than done. In reality, a lot of planning is needed before of Multi-Cloud adoption.
Thank you for reading & sharing.
Nick
