The growth of cloud computing continues unabated, but it has also created security challenges. Accelerating cloud adoption has increased complexity, with limited cloud technology expertise available in the market, an explosion in connected devices and the Internet of Things (IoT), and a growing need for multi-cloud environments.
When customers move to the cloud, there is a high potential for data security issues because many applications are not secure by design. When these applications move to cloud-native systems, errors in configuration settings can lead to cybersecurity risks. Delays occur in implementing cloud security controls for customer workloads during migrations, which exacerbates the problem. That's why Gartner predicts that by 2025, 99% of cloud breaches will be caused by misconfigurations, most of which will be attributed to human error that could have been prevented.
Shared responsibility model for cloud security
Based on the well-established shared responsibility model for cloud security, customers and cloud providers bear responsibility for cloud security. Cloud providers are responsible for security “in the cloud,” while customers are responsible for security “in the cloud.” However, the extent of customer responsibility depends on the consumption model.
Most of the time, the cloud provider's infrastructure is secure. However, there is the potential for data security issues on the client side, including cybersecurity and workload issues. Cloud misconfigurations occur when cloud security settings are not configured properly, creating vulnerabilities that can be exploited by external hackers using ransomware or insider threat actors exploiting vulnerabilities.
Understand compliance monitoring
As a general rule, customers can benefit from enabling access control using data encryption and performing regular audits. They must also create compliance programs to address ongoing alignment with security controls. Cloud security standards must be implemented to meet the needs of cloud services to meet those relevant requirements issued by state and federal governments and industry standards. Additionally, internal policies should provide important guardrails for cloud security.
Understanding cloud security standards for your business cloud estate and what additional protections might benefit your IT environment is critical. Continuous management of cloud protection supports continued success. Many customers perform periodic audits of their cloud security compliance posture only to discover that misconfigurations have crept in. Human error is usually the culprit, so having a continuous controls compliance monitoring solution to meet applicable cloud security requirements is vital to detect these misconfigurations as they arise in real time.
Use artificial general intelligence to improve cloud security
As the world moves to embrace generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) for various use cases, there is an opportunity to use this emerging technology to improve cybersecurity protection in the cloud. Cloud security standards are a critical element in protecting a customer's cybersecurity. The use of AI technology to create, monitor and manage cloud security controls within a customer's cloud infrastructure must be designed to protect against human-caused misconfigurations and report against compliance with cloud security requirements.
There are three main ways to improve your cloud security posture by creating continuous monitoring capabilities for controls using new generation AI:
Deployment: Cloud security standards can be translated by AI to enable seamless deployment of preventative and detective cloud security controls, potentially improving productivity and compliance with these requirements. Management: The AI model can be trained to continuously learn about the environment, provide up-to-the-minute changes to cloud security posture controls and quickly respond to any detected concerns. Threat Detection: The AI model can also be trained to detect, correlate and align cloud security measures with threats and automatic and semi-automatic response capabilities for real-time action and analysis.
Point Security's solutions help manage customers' cloud posture management, and will continue to be part of the cybersecurity toolkit that customers can leverage. However, static tools do not adapt in real time. Instead, a continuous controls monitoring solution using artificial general intelligence demonstrates that it is the ideal solution, as customer IT environments comply with the latest cloud security standards and can adapt to misconfiguration aberrations when they occur, automatically correcting high-risk exposures.
Resilient cyber defense with artificial general intelligence
Because a continuous controls monitoring solution is dynamic and self-healing, its capabilities should accelerate the deployment of cloud security controls that comply with customer policies. It will also improve security operations by providing visibility into cloud assets and activity across multiple cloud providers. Meanwhile, in the event of a security breach, the AI solution will identify threats and accelerate investigations through behavior analytics, data flow, and vulnerability analysis.
If used correctly, AI can be harnessed to help promote more effective cybersecurity controls, address compliance and improve overall cyber risk management and oversight in the cloud.
Continue reading
