Data storage and security is an important issue that all businesses and institutions must resolve. Data plays a crucial role in the operations and decision-making processes of businesses and institutions and some businesses also collect sensitive personal data from customers, patients, or clients that must be stored and protected. It is common for businesses to store their data on offline hard drives, servers, computers, and other devices, but more businesses are switching to cloud-based storage to consolidate their data and allow their employees to access the data from anywhere in one place.
Like with all forms of digital storage, cloud storage is at risk of data breaches and other cybersecurity threats if not properly configured and secured. The infrastructure of cloud storage solutions must be configured to meet the needs of your business or institution with the proper security measures in place to reduce the risk of threats or cyberattacks. It is important for businesses to implement cloud security posture management (CSPM) to monitor the cloud infrastructure for misconfigurations and security risks.
What is Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)?
CSPM is the process of monitoring your cloud infrastructure/ environment to find and resolve misconfigurations and identify and remediate risks to prevent breaches and other cyberattacks. This is usually done by implementing CSPM tools that assess the cloud environment to detect threats and remediate workflows. These tools can also handle compliance monitoring, remediation recommendations, incident responses, and DevOps integration for hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
By implementing CSPM solutions, businesses and institutions can ensure a streamlined cloud environment configured to their specific needs and be proactive in finding and addressing vulnerabilities.
Why is CSPM Important for Your Business?
There are several benefits to migrating stored data to a cloud environment as it can reduce IT costs, consolidate data as opposed to having it stored across separate hard drives and devices, allow employees of businesses and organizations to access the data from anywhere, and backup and better secure your data.
However, cloud-based storage solutions are still vulnerable to security risks. While clouds or often targeted for data breaches, they are more likely to be attacked due to unintended exposure caused by cloud misconfigurations and human error. Implementing CSPM tools can help you ensure that your cloud is properly configured to prevent unintended exposure. These tools can also provide automated responses to protect your business from the following:
- Misconfiguration
- Unauthorized access
- Lack of visibility
- External data sharing
- Legal and regulatory compliance issues
- Insecure interfaces
- Account hijacking
- Denial of Service (DoS)
- Improper use and configuration of cloud entitlements and identities
How CSPM Secures Your Cloud
Configuration of the cloud is so important because misconfiguration puts the security of your cloud infrastructure at risk. CSPM tools will visualize your cloud environment and find misconfigurations that could make your cloud vulnerable to security issues. These tools also remediate issues it finds through automation and can flag identified risks so they can be addressed.
CSPM tools can help manage your cloud and reduce security risks with the following actions:
- Continuous monitoring
- Workflow remediation
- Visibility
- Threat detection and protection
Capabilities of CSPM Tools
CSPM tools monitor your cloud environment to create a complete picture of the infrastructure and assess vulnerabilities. It is important to remember that the risks and functionality of your cloud environment are interconnected which makes CSPM tools invaluable for identifying and remediating risks and misconfiguration. These tools have the following capabilities to monitor and protect your cloud environment:
- Automated remediation to resolve issues without human involvement, including cloud misconfigurations and improper settings that increase the risk of an attack
- Assessment and management of IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS platforms within the cloud environment
- Policy visibility and enforcement
- Scanning for regulatory compliance mandate updates, including HIPAA, PCI, DSS, and GDPR, and new security requirement recommendations
- Risk assessments according to the standards of security organizations including the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
What are the Benefits of CSPM?
CSPM tools help businesses and organizations ensure that their cloud environment is configured to suit their specific needs and keep their data protected. The following are the main benefits of CSPM:
- Continuous monitoring: CSPM tools are always monitoring the cloud to identify misconfigurations and vulnerabilities so they can be addressed.
- Automated remediation: These tools can provide automated remediation responses to immediately fix misconfigurations and other issues.
- Visibility: CSPM tools create a complete picture of the cloud infrastructure, including configuration errors that could lead to a breach.
- Threat detection: These tools can detect complex threats in any type of cloud environment, including hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
- Compliance: CSPM provides compliance management to ensure compliance with the regulatory standards of HIPAA, GDPR, PCI, DSS, and more.
- Risk prioritization: These tools can flag risks and provide prioritized alerts to help IT teams manage and address security risks.
- Data security: Continuous monitoring of the infrastructure and security risks helps protect important data and prevent breaches.
- Multi-cloud and hybrid cloud protection: CSPM tools can monitor, assess, and manage complex cloud environments including hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
Why You Need CSPM for Your Business
Migrating data to a cloud environment is beneficial for businesses and organizations to consolidate and better protect their data. However, setting up a cloud infrastructure is not as simple as it seems as it must be configured properly to best suit your purposes and reduce the risk of breaches and other threats. Implementing CSPM tools can help your business or organization monitor your cloud environment for misconfigurations and vulnerabilities and automate some of the responses to these issues.
While there is a level of automation to CSPM tools, it is important for IT professionals to implement and monitor these tools so they can immediately respond to issues and vulnerabilities that cannot be resolved by CSPM automation. If your business or institution does not have an in-house IT staff, it is best to work with an IT professional like PSM Partners.
At PSM, we provide complete cloud computing services that include cloud setup, migration, and security. We can help configure a cloud environment that best suits the needs of your business, including private clouds, public clouds, hybrid clouds, and multi-cloud environments. We will also make sure your stored data is protected from breaches and other threats by implementing proper security measures, including CSPM tools, and continuously monitoring your cloud for potential threats so we can address the issue quickly.
To learn more about how we can help secure your cloud through effective CSPM, call PSM at (312) 940-7830.