7
BEST PRACTICES
FOR SECURING
THE PUBLIC CLOUD
Organisations across the region are increasingly turning
to public cloud services due to the many business benefits
they offer. However, it is important that security remains
a key consideration, as the responsibility for securing the
workloads and data placed in the cloud continues to lie with
the customer. Harish Chib, Vice President – Middle East and
Africa, Sophos, outlines seven important steps that every
organisation can take to secure the public cloud.
T
he simplicity and
cost-effectiveness
of the public
cloud have led
more and more
organisations to
take advantage of
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft
Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
You can spin up a new instance in
minutes, scale resources up and down
whenever you need while only paying
for what you use and avoid high upfront
hardware costs.
While the public cloud solves many
traditional IT resourcing challenges, it
does introduce new headaches.
The rapid growth of cloud usage has
resulted in a fractured distribution of
data, with workloads spread across
disparate instances and, for some
74
organisations, platforms. As a result,
keeping track of the data, workloads
and architecture changes in those
environments to keep everything secure
is often a highly challenging task.
Public cloud providers are responsible
for the security of the cloud (the physical
data centres and the separation of
customer environments and data).
However, the responsibility for securing
the workloads and data placed in the
cloud lies firmly with the customer.
Just as organisations need to secure
the data stored in their on-premises
networks, so they need to secure their
cloud environment.
Misunderstandings around this
distribution of ownership is widespread
and the resulting security gaps have
made cloud-based workloads the new
pot of gold for today’s savvy hackers.
Harish Chib, Vice President – Middle East
and Africa, Sophos
Securing the public
cloud is imperative
if you are to protect
your infrastructure
and organisation
from cyberattacks.
Seven steps to securing the
public cloud
The secret to effective cybersecurity
in the cloud is improving your overall
security posture – ensuring your
architecture is secure and configured
Issue 17
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