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HomeArchitectureEnsuring compliance across the multi-cloud

Ensuring compliance across the multi-cloud

A cloud-native organization inevitably embraces multicloud to solve complex business problems and to avoid vendor lock-in. However, this setup has its own set of regulatory concerns. Managing security risk in the cloud continues to be overwhelming, especially in a multicloud setup. To that end, several establishments worldwide have introduced frameworks and guidelines that help organizations protect data. The most common ones are NIST, GDPR, and CIS benchmarks. According to IAPP-EY Annual Privacy Governance Report 2021, 46% of U.S. organizations recognized “compliance (beyond the GDPR)” as their highest priority. Companies doing business across geographies must adhere to benchmarks and compliance frameworks while focusing on creating an ongoing approach to assessment and remediation. Organizations pursuing multi-cloud capabilities to meet their business or regulatory concerns without the right platform will suffer significantly. 

Understanding key security frameworks

Let’s begin by looking at the key benchmarks that matter for cloud-native security.

CIS Benchmarks 

CIS Benchmarks for cloud infrastructure offers security standards that focus on securely configuring cloud environments. Every business has unique security goals, so CIS assigns a profile level to each CIS Benchmark guideline. Broadly there are three levels. 

  • Level One is the base recommendation that is easy to follow and does not impact business functionality or uptime. 
  • Level Two is a defense-in-depth configuration that works on highly sensitive data where security is a priority while helping businesses achieve regulatory compliance. 
  • Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG) is a configuration baseline developed by Defense Information Systems Agency that contains Level 1 and Level 2 profile recommendations and covers both CIS and STIG compliance requirements. 

SOC2

Developed by the AICPA, SOC2 is one of the most common compliance goals for technology companies. It is a technical audit that has been designed specifically for service providers storing customer data in the cloud. SOC2 mandates companies to establish and follow strict information security policies and procedures. To meet SOC2 regulations, businesses must focus on monitoring known and unknown system activity, anomaly alerts, detailed audit trails, and actionable forensics. 

NIST

The National Institute of Standards and Technology developed best practices for cloud computing. This included a cloud computing reference architecture, a standards roadmap, and other government and businesses-related information guides. NIST 800-53 mandates the security and privacy control required for the federal government and critical infrastructure. Businesses that work with the U.S. federal government mandate NIST 800-53 as it proves their solvency in cybersecurity.

Challenges in meeting compliance requirements 

All multicloud compliance requires 100% via a unified, purpose-built platform. However, most businesses depend on agent-based deployments or integrated solutions that result in blind spots, leading to increased work for security and compliance teams. When the security coverage is not end-to-end, businesses often face issues such as increased organizational friction, cybersecurity risk, and failed audits. Broadly while preparing to meet regulatory requirements, companies face three challenges – 

  • Businesses cannot claim to be 100% compliant unless the security solutions work across the entire cloud estate. However, agent-based solutions do not offer end-to-end coverage, thus leaving organizations with less than enough security to prevent cyber attacks. 
  • While adopting a multicloud setup, most businesses face the issue of lack of uniformity. Most native security tools are unique to each platform, thus expanding the scope of the security team to maintain and align policies across various solutions. 
  • Increase in alerts and complexity while using several different point solutions. 
  • Regionalization is a challenge for multinational organizations doing business in multiple geographies as they must deal with different data sovereignty and data protection laws in that region. 

Orca Security’s Multicloud compliance solution

Orca Security simplifies cloud compliance with a single platform. The solution inspects the entire cloud workloads and configurations across various cloud provider platforms, thus ensuring 100% security and compliance policies. The platform deploys the security control in minutes across the entire cloud estate without needing a single agent. Use the single, agentless cloud security solution from Orca Security to meet over 65 out-of-the-box frameworks, CIS Benchmarks, and custom compliance checks across multiple cloud platforms. The solution addresses all critical security issues, allowing the security team to address compliance gaps strategically. 

Key features of Orca Cloud Security Platform for multi-cloud compliance 

  • Seamlessly create custom frameworks, including NIST, SOC 2, ISO-27001, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, and CCPA, and a wide range of CIS benchmarks.
  • Scan, find, and protect sensitive data across the entire cloud estate while meeting key data privacy mandates such as PCI-DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, and CCPA. 
  • Automate compliance tasks and testing of cloud workloads across multiple cloud provider platforms to improve response in the event of a compliance failure.
  • Avoid releasing non-compliant applications by conducting thorough security and compliance checks across the entire software development lifecycle, such as IaC template and container image scanning.
  • Complete coverage across the compliance status of the entire cloud, including network configurations, storage buckets, workloads and applications, identities, data, and more
  • Orca’s comprehensive management dashboard creates centralized cloud compliance across Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud.
  • Understand and communicate risks to improve cloud security posture with Orca Security Score based on suspicious activity, IAM, vulnerable assets, data at risk, and responsiveness.

Conclusion 

Keeping the cloud and the organization’s workloads and data secure is a continuous task. One of the fundamental reasons for compliance is to mitigate security risk by reducing the exposed attack surface. To that end, compliance against CIS benchmarks is considered an effective way to enforce security controls and offer a robust foundation for industry standards. Businesses with multicloud setups need effective compliance measures with a programmatic approach that supports multiple-cloud providers, allows framework customization, and automates compliance tasks.  

If you have questions related to this topic, feel free to book a meeting with one of our solutions experts, mail to sales@amazic.com.

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