AWS cloud security is designed to help protect data, accounts, and workloads from unauthorized access. It includes services that encrypt data, enforce access controls, and manage encryption keys.
AWS cloud is transparent about the AWS shared responsibility model and enables you to implement cloud security that fits your business needs. Let's look a bit more at what AWS cloud security is and the many benefits provided.
What is AWS cloud security?
AWS stands for Amazon Web Services, one of the leading cloud service providers in the market today. When you first learn about AWS cloud security, you will likely notice the range of tools and features that help provide a secure public cloud from AWS.
The AWS security practices give customers more control over how their data is stored and a reduction of human configuration errors. AWS cloud security refers to the security tools, qualities, and features you get when you choose Amazon Web Services as your cloud computing provider.
What are the different types of cloud security?
There are three types of cloud security to consider:
Private
Public
Hybrid
These three types are all a bit different and must be approached differently. For example, if you're using a public cloud, you may require a different level of cloud security than if you're using a private cloud or vice versa.
Private cloud security is already heightened simply because your organization will be the only one with access to the cloud platform. A public cloud is less secure, so adding additional levels of cloud security might be necessary.
A hybrid cloud is a mixture of both public and private. This makes it rather unique, and you might require a higher level of cloud security, or you may not, depending on your situation. This type of AWS environment might also be referred to as a virtual private cloud.
Regardless of the type of cloud you decide to use, it's important to maintain a specific security posture. Ransomware attacks and cybersecurity breaches are on the rise. With the right level of cloud security, you can keep important data secure and protected from unauthorized access.
6 Benefits of Using AWS Cloud Security
1. Flexibility
AWS Cloud Security provides a flexible environment for organizations to deploy their applications. It lets users choose the operating system, programming language, and web application platform that they want to use.
The AWS shared responsibility model gives the user more flexibility but also allows AWS to provide infrastructure and access management. Customers are responsible for architecting, deploying, configuring, and maintaining their security. Its security services and features include firewalls, encryption, and interservice transport layer security (TLS).
Encryption is important for cloud-based data storage, as it makes information less accessible to hackers or others who aren't authorized to see it. AWS also offers a key management service that enables centralized control over encryption keys.
2. Cost-Effective
AWS cloud security is cost-effective because it provides several features that reduce the need for additional firewalls, encryption software, and other hardware. This is true whether the data is in the cloud or on-premises, and it helps minimize the risk of a compromise.
3. Variety of Security Tools
Using AWS security tools can help keep your organization's data and applications secure. For example, you can encrypt and protect sensitive information in storage services like Amazon S3 and AWS DynamoDB, along with monitoring access to AWS accounts.
AWS security service includes threat detection and monitoring, compliance and data privacy, configuration management, and identity and access management. These services are essential for ensuring the security of your cloud environment and sensitive data.
The services also provide tools that enable users to configure new resources securely and manage existing ones. In addition, AWS security service offers policies to ensure that new resources are aligned with regulatory and compliance standards. With the many AWS resources, it's easier to create a safe and accessible cloud environment while minimizing cloud vulnerabilities.
4. Scalability
Scalable cloud platforms give you the flexibility to meet shifting business needs. You can upgrade storage and systems as needed and change your infrastructure design easily, all while maintaining excellent cloud security posture management.
Changing your cloud architecture requires minimal technical expertise, so you can focus on other business priorities. Then, when you need to add new capacity, you can quickly increase the number of virtual machines.
In addition to scalability, AWS cloud services allow for auto-scaling, which increases or decreases the amount of computing resources on demand as needed. This means your applications can respond to changes in user traffic without disrupting users or impacting service levels.
5. Security
Of course, one of the main benefits of using AWS security is the actual security provided. You can ensure your virtual private cloud remains secure with many features, such as Amazon Guardduty, Amazon Inspector, and AWS CloudWatch.
Security teams should use tools that allow them to identify sensitive data and apply detection mechanisms to cloud activity logs to detect risky behavior, such as suspicious activity in Amazon S3 storage buckets or S3 credentials being shared with unauthorized users. Similarly, hard-coded secrets should be rotated and managed using AWS Secrets Manager to ensure that only authorized users can access sensitive information.
Security in the cloud is not always easy. Many teams mistakenly approach cloud security in a silo, ignoring their existing security measures on-premises. This can leave gaps that are exploitable by malicious actors.
6. Remain Compliant
You will also remain compliant when you choose AWS security to mitigate your cloud computing risk. With activity monitoring services, you will know when a security event happens within your AWS account. You can even integrate AWS activity with an existing monitoring solution to make compliance reporting simple.
By using the many AWS resources, you can ensure integration of compliance and security. AWS provides compliance reports based on the many security controls managed in the AWS environment. This makes it faster and easier to meet specific compliance and security standards.
How can RiskRecon help me?
RiskRecon, a Mastercard Company, can help ensure you have the security team to create the secure cloud platform that fits your business. We offer a variety of security tools and features to help ensure your cloud computing environment isn't at risk. Learn more in our AWS Assessment Toolkit, which includes RiskRecon’s step-by-step strategy for security assessment, our AWS Core Security Criteria, and a questionnaire to reveal how secure your site is.
