Cloudnexa Whitepaper: Security

Introduction

When is the last time you heard about a company being hacked? It probably wasn’t that long ago. Data security is top of mind for all IT professionals. Moving to AWS has many security benefits including the Shared Responsibility Model, AWS Security Services, and Compliance. Leveraging partners to bridge gaps is also key to security success.

AWS Security Benefits

Leveraging a Shared Responsibility Model

Two is always better than one—and three is even better! Leveraging a Shared Responsibility Model identifies the teamwork between you, AWS, and partners like Cloudnexa when it comes to your data security. A Shared Responsibility Model makes it easy to understand your choices for protecting your unique AWS environment and provides you with access to resources that can help you implement end-to-end security quickly and easily. An example of Cloudnexa’s Shared Responsibility Model is show below:

The Shared Responsibility Model empowers you with the clarity, flexibility, and control you need to build on the cloud with the utmost confidence.

Understanding AWS Security Services

Leveraging AWS Security Services automates the security process and reduces risk. However, one size does not fit all. Understanding and choosing from the available AWS Security Services can be overwhelming given the extensive amount available. Knowing which Core and Second Tier services to use and how to integrate them is key to your security success.

While some AWS services are always leveraged such as AWS WAF, Amazon GuardDuty, and AWS Certificate Manager, others depend on the situation. Experienced AWS partners like Cloudnexa can help you properly select, configure, and manage the appropriate AWS Security Services to ensure the right fit for your situation and environment.

Inheriting AWS Compliance

Gain the control and confidence you need to securely run your business. Under the Shared Responsibility Model, AWS is responsible for datacenter compliance. As an AWS customer, you will benefit from AWS datacenters and a network architected to protect your information, identities, applications, and devices. You can improve your ability to meet core security and compliance requirements, such as data locality, protection, and confidentiality with AWS’ comprehensive services and features.

AWS supports more security and privacy standards and compliance certifications than any other offering.

AWS regularly achieves third-party validation for thousands of global compliance requirements to help you meet security and compliance standards for finance, retail, healthcare, government, and more. You inherit the latest security controls operated by AWS, strengthening your own compliance and certification programs, while also receiving access to tools you can use to reduce your cost and time to run your own specific security assurance requirements. AWS supports more security and privacy standards and compliance certifications than any other offering, including PCI-DSS, HIPAA/HITECH, FedRAMP, GDPR, FIPS 140-2, and NIST 800-171, helping satisfy compliance requirements for virtually every regulatory agency around the globe.

Leveraging partners to bridge gaps

82% of Windows applications are still on-premise, hosted, or in a private cloud.

While moving to AWS removes many security responsibilities off your shoulders, you’re still responsible for determining what is hosted and how it’s accessed. AWS partners like Cloudnexa help bridge the gap between AWS’ responsibilities and yours.

Our recommendations include:

• Designing your environment is key to ensure proper boundaries. Deploying services like AWS Config to monitor ensures everything is working together between you, AWS, and your trusted partner.
• Make sure continued compliance monitoring (such as Cloudscan and AWS Config) is enabled to check for misconfigurations.
• Leverage a variety of ISV partners on the AWS Marketplace where you can quickly procure a variety of software to close the last gap. One example is Trend Micro Cloud One to mitigate against potential activities such as ransomware and malware attacks.

Conclusion

Moving to AWS has many security benefits including the Shared Responsibility Model, AWS Security Services, and Compliance. Partners like Cloudnexa also help bridge the gaps, ensuring your environment is secure. Start your journey by contacting us