Securing the Cloud with Continuous Control Monitoring- MetricStream

While CSPs do safeguard certain cloud components, you’re ultimately responsible for the security of everything else, including your data and endpoints. An overlooked security incident can be detrimental and even result in shutting down business operations, leading to a decrease in customer trust and satisfaction — especially if customer data was leaked. Cloud security monitoring can help with business continuity and data security, while avoiding a potentially catastrophic data breach. In a dynamic environment where the total number of assets is always changing, there should be a solid core of the fleet that can be scanned via traditional means of active scanning. We just need to accept that we are not going to be able to scan the complete inventory.

A toxic combination arises when the sum of an identity’s permissions enables it to perform actions that are far greater than the intended purpose. It can be difficult to detect toxic combinations, especially in large organizations with thousands of identities. Configuration management and change control processes help maintain the secure baseline configuration of the cloud.gov architecture.

Misconfiguration Detection

Malicious actors can launch denial-of-service (DoS) attacks to exploit APIs, allowing them to access company data. Setting asset expiry is one way to enforce CDM principals in a high DevOps environment that leverages IaC. The goal of CDM is to assess assets every 72 hours, and thus we can set them to expire (get torn down, and therefore require rebuild) within the timeframe to know they are living on fresh infrastructure built with approved code. Chris has worked as a Linux systems administrator and freelance writer with more than ten years of experience covering the tech industry, especially open source, DevOps, cloud native and security. He also teaches courses on the history and culture of technology at a major university in upstate New York.

The effectiveness of cloud.gov’s continuous monitoring capability supports ongoing authorization and reauthorization decisions. Security-related information collected during continuous monitoring https://www.globalcloudteam.com/ is used to make updates to the security authorization package. Updated documents provide evidence that FedRAMP baseline security controls continue to safeguard the system as originally planned.

SLO monitoring

Whether your data is stored in an S3 bucket, Azure Blob, or Google Cloud Storage, you want to know what your data is, how it relates to business continuity, who can access it, and if they’re accessing it – in other words, classify it. Having an around the clock idea of where your data is and who can access it will ensure you don’t let your most valuable resource fall into the wrong hands. If the right identity with unnecessary privileges is compromised by a bad-actor, that criminal can essentially do whatever they want in your environment. A CSM solution helps keep a tight watch on identity effective permissions and alerts you when certain identities move away from least privilege.

• And one trend that companies in the cloud are embracing is continuous security monitoring (CSM).
• Like any innovative concept in the world of IT, continuous monitoring is not something you can just buy or turn on.
• This is possible through setting a secure baseline or policy in your environment and monitoring against it to detect deviations.
• Instead, implementing continuous monitoring requires teams to configure the right mix of tools and processes to meet their monitoring goals.

The cloud.gov team achieves its continuous monitoring strategy primarily by implementing and maintaining a suite of automated components, with some manual tasks to assist with documenting and reporting to people outside the core team. Traditional network infrastructure is more physical, with on-premises data centers and a lot of hardware devices to manage. In this case, network implementation and monitoring focus primarily on the availability, connectivity, and performance of server infrastructure devices such as switches, firewalls, and routers. It’s accomplished with the help of a Network Management System (NMS), which uses standard protocols like SNMP, ICMP and WMI to collect performance statistics. As a result, you’re able to build a stronger, more secure cloud environment, reducing your risk, improving compliance, and controlling your costs – while protecting your organization from serious business and reputational impact.

CCM in the Cloud – A Business Imperative

CSM helps detect when your cloud has drifted out of compliance, allowing you to avoid penalties and fines. A robust CSM strategy should augment and enhance your detection and remediation capabilities — and provide historical and real time security, monitoring, and reporting across all environments and accounts. Other advantages of network monitoring include increased efficiency and flexibility, controlled cost, better utilization of IT resources and personnel, and access to historical network data for analytics. MetricStream is the global SaaS leader of Integrated Risk Management (IRM) and Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) solutions that empower organizations to thrive on risk by accelerating growth through risk-aware decisions.

Faith is a full-stack software engineer, technical writer, and a DevOps enthusiast, with a passion for problem-solving through implementation of high-quality software products. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Ashesi University and has experience working in several industries in Kenya, Ghana and the US. Driven by intellectual curiosity, she combines her passion for teaching, technology, and research to create technical articles.

This iterative, autonomous testing process enables you to proactively detect and mitigate anomalies that could otherwise go unnoticed. It provides a true picture of your organization’s cloud security and compliance posture. These cloud security controls need to be tested and monitored to ensure they are working as intended.

Cloud security controls aren’t just essential for threat mitigation, but also for compliance. There are a multitude of standards, frameworks, and regulations that companies in the cloud are expected to adhere to. Still, bad actors continue to find newer and better ways of attacking the cloud to steal sensitive data. All it takes is a vulnerability in one of your cloud applications for attackers to slip inside your network, undetected. According to the 2022 Thales Cloud Security study, 45% of surveyed organizations said that they have experienced a data breach or failed an audit involving data in the cloud. AWS IoT Device Defender can also continuously monitor security metrics from devices and AWS IoT Core for deviations that are defined as appropriate behavior for each device.

This analysis on a monthly basis leads to a continuous authorization decision every month by Authorizing Officials. The best part is that CCM by nature is automated and always on – so you don’t have to waste your time and resources manually monitoring controls. Technology does the heavy lifting, enabling you to focus on the more impactful and strategic aspects of cloud security. For example, a continuous monitoring tool can generate an alert about the free storage space of a particular server dropping below a preset threshold. As a result, an automated SMS text message could be sent to the infrastructure team, prompting them to increase the server’s capacity or add extra space to the disk volume.

We connect governance, risk management and compliance across the extended enterprise. Our ConnectedGRC and three product lines – BusinessGRC, CyberGRC, and ESGRC – is based on a single, scalable platform that supports you wherever you are on your GRC journey. Many organizations assume that their cloud service providers (CSPs) will handle all their security needs.

Boost confidence in compliance with a proactive, automated, and complete testing approach compared to manual, sample-based testing. In this eBook, we explore why CCM is essential to improving your cloud security risk and compliance posture, and, ultimately your IT and cyber risk management processes. We also look at how MetricStream CCM makes control monitoring across compliance frameworks and requirements – like NIST-CSF, PCI-DSS, SOC 2, and HIPAA – quick, simple, and autonomous. Security teams should do a deep dive into their existing cloud infrastructure to understand potential risks, such as shadow IT. Organizations should perform regular audits and know what changes were made within their cloud environments to help identify causes of misconfigurations.

Service-level objectives measure user experience and improve collaboration with developers. Gain visibility into the performance, availability, and health of your applications and infrastructure. Finally, the third key element in continuous monitoring is to make sure you can react quickly to monitoring insights. In many cases, you can’t actually monitor every resource and environment continuously because doing so would require too many resources.

But each step forward can also introduce greater complexity to your IT footprint, affecting their ongoing administration. Patent Nos. 10,728,307 and 11,134,085, together with other domestic and international patents pending. Sharing credentials, having weak passwords or more nefarious tactics can often lead to credential compromise. When this happens, unauthorized users can gain access to private resources or act upon the privileges they have in the environment. CSM would help detect this unusual identity behavior and alert you of anomalous actions or access.