Protect Your Organization with Cloud Security Monitoring from Malicious Attacks

More and more businesses are moving towards cloud computing development services because of their massive advantages over the on-premise network. Yet there are some issues with security.

Security has been the primary threat to cloud computing for a long time. The fundamental difference between on-premise and cloud computing networks is the number of users using the network.

Though you have to manage everything on your own for the on-premise network, you do not need to worry about security since it is not a shared network like cloud computing.

On the other hand, cloud computing is a shared network among many other people, so obviously it has a risk of safety. 

Does this mean you need to get rid of cloud computing?

No! Not at all.

There are several organizations working with cloud computing, and all of them are pretty safe at the moment. This is all because of cloud security monitoring tools.

Cloud security monitoring tools ensure that your cloud infrastructure is safe and sound through regular check-ups. It is true that there are many hackers out there who are ready to hack your personal credentials like usernames, passwords, etc. Hence, it is best to monitor your cloud infrastructure all the time.

Before we jump into further details — let us look at the definition of cloud security monitoring. 

What is Cloud Security Monitoring?

Cloud security monitoring is essentially a tool that looks after the management and monitoring of your network. This requires consistent data to analyze and keep the servers, infrastructure, networks, databases, and storage safe.

Why Do You Need Security Monitoring?

When you think of a security breach in the cloud, you think of hackers. Well, that may be true, but it is not the only one behind the security breach. There are several other reasons why you are experiencing these security infringements. Some of them are:

• Vulnerable devices
• Mobiles
• Weak operating systems
• Malware
• Hackers
• Careless employees
• Third-party service providers, and
• Public Cloud 

All the above reasons are a certain threat to running the system optimally. To avoid this situation, you need constant attention to quickly react to the malicious attack and prevent the system from a certain security breach.

How Do You Monitor Security Control Performance and Effectiveness?

Security control is a never-ending process. It is not like once you set it up and thereafter; it is over. You need to periodically check the security controls if they are working as intended.

We have three ways to check this security control, and they are:

• Security Metrics — Set a few metrics and review them regularly.
• Vulnerability Assessments and Penetration Testings
• Complete Internal Audit

The above three ensure that your cloud infrastructure works perfectly with no disruption. Anyhow, we will further discuss the above three in the following.

Security Metrics

It is impossible to tell the performance without measuring it, and to measure something — we need to have the metrics.

Set up metrics to test the performance of security controls to monitor the cloud. You can set some objectives and assess them over time to see how it performs.

Basically, we can notice the performance in three divisions, and they are:

Operational Statistics

These statistics necessarily don’t reveal any organizational objectives, but they help in assessing the number of attacks that the organization has faced in its entire life cycle. You can see them again in two categories, such as,

• How many anomalies have been detected and need some investigation into it
• How many anomalies have breached security and incurred data loss to the organization 

Performance Measures

Performance measures are measures taken by the employees against the vulnerabilities of the system to maintain the security posture of the organization. You can quantify the performance of your organization’s objectives with these measures.

Compliance Goals

Compliance goals are a specific type of performance measure to quantify how many exceptions are requested by users who are against the organization’s policies.

These policies are set up by the organization in order to minimize the security breach. At the same time, you should also keep track of how many exceptions are authorized by the management.

Vulnerability Assessments and Penetration Testings

Vulnerability assessments are essentially the organization’s objectives. The outcome of the vulnerability assessment is to find out if there are vulnerabilities in the system that we need to be aware of. If there are any such issues, then immediately we need to send these issues to the next stage, which is penetration testing.

During penetration testing, we will run a test to see if hackers can exploit these vulnerabilities. There are many hackers who are ready to exploit this situation and use it to their advantage, therefore, it is imperative that we take care of these issues and see if there are any security gaps in the organization, and solve it then and there.

Once you find these, the next step you need to do is pass these results to the internal audit department.

Complete Internal Audit 

An internal audit is a must after every inspection. An internal audit can give you many details regarding how many breaches have occurred, how many breaches we investigate, how many breaches we resolve, how many vulnerabilities exist in the system, and what measures people have taken to tackle it.

The internal audit team will keep a record of all these things so that in the future we will know what the priorities of the organization are. Additionally, it will be very easy to look after metrics since we already know what metrics are in a vulnerable state regularly, therefore, measures will be strict from the next time.

In short, this is how you can look after performing cloud security monitoring and its effectiveness.

Conclusion

These days security breaches are not something to brush off just like that. They are a massive concern in the current situation. Right from Google to even a small website, customers are not ready to give every detail of themselves for some online service.

From time to time, we are witnessing this security breaches happening every now and then. Because of this, customers are becoming more and more aware of this issue and becoming protective of everything.

Looking at all these scenarios, it is time that you realize the importance of cloud security monitoring, and install some tools to protect your organization from a certain threat.

Not only does cloud security monitoring ensure the safety of the system, but it also ensures the flexibility of the system. It prevents the servers from crashing when you want to scale up/scale down the cloud computing resources. Additionally, it facilitates the option of offering a secure service to your end-user through the cloud.

Hopefully, you will choose the right cloud security monitoring tool and cloud application development companies to secure your organization.

For more information regarding cloud computing and cloud computing security, consult one of our cloud computing specialists for a clear understanding.

Thanks!