Session Leader: Justin Williams – Executive: Group Information Security, MTN Group
Session Title: Practical approaches to dealing with key Cloud challenges and Risks
Contextualised overview:
The Cloud is here whether you like it or not. Increased pressure from internal organisational customers and external solution providers is forcing organisations to progress on the cloud journey regardless of reservations.
There are several key components to security in any infrastructure—and the cloud is no exception. What is different about security in the cloud is where the responsibility for managing different security components lies.
With an on-premises solution, your organization is solely responsible for all aspects of security. In the cloud, a cloud service provider (CSP) may take responsibility for certain components of their infrastructure. Here’s a table showing the typical allocation of responsibility for different IT security components for specific types of cloud services:
Responsibility for Key Security Components in the Cloud |
|
|
|
IT Security Component |
IaaS |
PaaS |
SaaS |
User Access |
You |
You |
You |
Data |
You |
You |
You |
Applications |
You |
You |
CSP |
Operating System (OS) |
You |
CSP |
CSP |
Network Traffic |
You |
CSP |
CSP |
Hypervisor |
CSP |
CSP |
CSP |
Infrastructure |
CSP |
CSP |
CSP |
Physical |
CSP |
CSP |
CSP |
Source: www.compuquip.com/blog/cloud-security-challenges-and-risks
It’s important to note that this table only represents a typical allocation of responsibility. Cloud service providers may have different allocations of responsibility outlined in their service agreements. The complexity only grows where application and service providers are introduced who are providing services built on top of the cloud provider as the responsibilities marked as CSP may now be distributed between multiple parties and tends to be even more vague.
Given this complexity, let us use the power of our community to further explore the key risks and challenges, share some of our experiences and challenges and possible solutions.
6 Subsections (and related questions)
- Lack of transparency, visibility and control
- Vendor lock-in
- Application of the Lockheed Martin Cyber Kill Chain in the cloud
- Cloud as an opportunity to optimise limited security budget
- Technical compliance challenges
- Legal, regulatory and governance compliance challenges
Expected outcomes and action areas (tangible returns)
- Possible solutions, successes and failures
- Sources of useful references material in relation to the section
- Recommendations for tools and services which organisations have successfully used in addressing the challenges
Slides
Cloud Workshop