As organizations continue to migrate operations to the cloud, the need for comprehensive cloud security is more critical than ever. In particular, Zero Trust is gaining traction across industries as organizations prioritize “never trust, always verify” security models to protect their on-premises and cloud environments.
A primary goal of Zero Trust is to minimize the attack surface — and microsegmentation is key to achieving this. By segmenting networks into individual applications or processes, organizations limit what an attacker can reach even if they infiltrate a single network segment.
Also read: Hybrid Cloud Dynamics: Reinforcing Security Efficiency for Tomorrow’s Challenges
But what happens if you’re using multiple clouds? Or a single cloud alongside on-premises hardware? Seamless security across diverse environments is essential.
Comprehensive visibility
The visibility provided by the hyperscalers is based on logs that detail the flows among workloads, and you usually end up needing a third-party solution to collate this information in order to understand dependencies and how the components are communicating.
Without unified visibility, it is very difficult to build and apply policy that protects those components without breaking something critical. This problem compounds when you’re using multiple public clouds, as you need to maintain a similar level of visibility into both environments.
A single unified interface
Segmentation is the core component to support Zero Trust security across customers cloud environments — and comprehensive visibility is key to both microsegmentation and Zero Trust.
Customers typically engage with providers during their cloud migration journey to map and protect their digital crown jewels (i.e., their most critical assets and applications), allowing them to accelerate their move to their preferred cloud without sacrificing security.
Consistent policy
Creating consistent policies across hybrid cloud environments using native cloud security tools is extremely complex, as each cloud’s native controls do not extend beyond the boundaries of that environment.
Policies created using Network Security Groups in Microsoft Azure will not automatically extend to assets residing in AWS. Conversely, policies created using Security Groups in AWS will not automatically extend to assets residing in Azure. And both of these are disconnected from the policies created to secure on-premises assets.
Agentless policy enforcement
What happens if your application functionality relies on assets located across all these different environments? Policy creation and management becomes extremely difficult, and increases the chances of a misconfiguration that could lead to a breach. Also, as organizations are increasingly leveraging platform as a service (PaaS) resources in public cloud environments, you need a solution that can enforce policy for those resources, as well, without requiring an agent.
A platform that provides a single solution to manage your cloud security policy across hybrid cloud environments will be of advantage here. Leveraging the comprehensive visibility provided by such a solution, the enforcement engine can enact a policy that covers assets residing in both on-premises and cloud environments.
Such a solution is primarily agent-based, and customers use this to secure virtual machines and other assets residing in cloud environments.
Additional security value
The best microsegmentation solutions provide security value above and beyond their core functionality. As organizations move toward using single vendors to provide several cybersecurity solutions (as opposed to combining multiple best-in-breed products from different vendors), it’s important to invest in solutions that come from a trusted provider known for offering premier security solutions, allowing you to take advantage of their long-standing expertise and additional security benefits.
Look for microsegmentation solutions that:
- Do not require external connectivity to access security groups and flows
- Have policy templates and suggestions crafted specifically for the cloud
- Can leverage built-in reputation analysis and threat intelligence to rapidly identify suspicious communications and known threats
- Are part of a larger, holistic platform that supports Zero Trust security in hybrid cloud environments — and beyond
Microsegmentation: A core functionality of Zero Trust
The future of cloud security lies in adaptive solutions that can meet the demands of dynamic hybrid cloud and multicloud environments. By embracing microsegmentation as a core functionality of Zero Trust, and by selecting a microsegmentation solution that has all the capabilities described above, organizations can fortify their cloud security strategies, stay compliant, and protect their valuable data against evolving threats.
The article has been written by Jacob Abrams, Product Marketing Manager at Akamai
