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Cloud

4 MIN READ

Commentary



UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ON-PREMISES AND CLOUD CYBERSECURITY

The nature of cloud environments means security and technical teams need a
different mindset to understand and manage their new attack surface.
Oliver Tavakoli
Chief Technology Officer, Vectra AI
September 21, 2023
Source: John Williams RF via Alamy Stock Photo
PDF


The difference between managing cybersecurity in on-premises and cloud
environments is not unlike playing traditional versus three-dimensional chess.
While the tactics are similar and goals are the same — reduce risk, protect
confidential data, meet compliance requirements, and the like — the cloud adds
complexity that completely changes the dynamic. The cloud's architecture, lack
of change controls, and subtle and not-so-subtle differences in various cloud
platforms' basic design and operations make cloud security more complex.



While migrating to infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service
(PaaS), software-as-a-service (SaaS), and serverless computing is well
established, some veteran technical and management staff who were trained in
on-premises environments still bring that operational bias to managing clouds.
However, the nature of cloud environments means security and technical teams
need a different mindset to understand and manage their new attack surface.


THREE CLOUDS, THREE ENVIRONMENTS

Organizations often use multiple vendors' clouds, whether to meet specific
operational needs, optimize price and performance, or access specialized
capabilities. Most midsize to large organizations use two or more clouds (making
them multicloud) in conjunction with on-premises servers and infrastructure
(referred to as hybrid cloud).

Microsoft Azure is the popular choice if you're running Windows for your
in-house applications. There is a natural gravity to move to Azure once it no
longer makes sense to deploy more racks in your data center. If you are
deploying large-scale Web apps, the natural affinity is towards Amazon Web
Services (AWS), although Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is also attractive for
these use cases. GCP is also known for its analytics capabilities (BigQuery), so
some organizations use it exclusively as a data lake with advanced analytics.



To effectively protect every cloud environment, cybersecurity teams must be
security experts for each one. But there is a disconnect between how much
additional work people think two or three clouds should entail and the work it
actually entails, as each cloud's attack surface is distinct. So, splitting your
workloads across two clouds almost doubles the knowledge and work required
compared to running all your workloads in a single cloud.




DMZ DIFFERENCES

Another difference is that an on-premises data center has a well-defined
demilitarized zone (DMZ) to protect external-facing services, while cloud
environments mostly don't.

A physical data center has a clear (often physical) DMZ where multiple security
controls and monitoring are implemented. There are clear pathways into and out
of a data center that an adversary's command-and-control channel and
exfiltration traffic would need to traverse.



In the cloud, the DMZ is more of a logical construct, and often the DMZ's
reality does not align with the organization's mental model. It is not unusual
for a scan to find unexpected holes exposing organizational data outside the
environment. Chasing down and managing your DMZ requires specialized expertise
that security architects who focus on on-premises networks may not have.


LEAKY CLOUD SERVICES

Attackers can leverage many multitenant cloud services to communicate in and out
of a cloud environment in a way that bypasses the tenant's network. A classic
example is when an attacker breaks into an AWS environment and expands access
(from the Internet or another AWS tenant) to an S3 bucket. You can't observe an
attacker reading 10GB of content from the S3 bucket on the tenant's network;
because it occurs in the cloud service provider's backplane, it is basically
invisible to the tenant. If that same 10GB of content was exfiltrated from an
on-premises network, it likely would be flagged and the security team notified.

If this were just about having the right controls for cloud storage services in
place, it might seem like a manageable problem. But each service in the cloud
has its own features and controls, and some may enable hidden external
communication. Your cybersecurity team must be able to find all of them (not
just the ones you intend to use) and have the necessary controls and monitoring
in place.


PROBLEMS WITH UPDATES

Cloud providers make regular updates, such as adding new services, improving
capabilities in existing ones, or changing a service's default settings. Even
services you don't intend to use can expose you to risk, as attackers who have
burrowed into your environment can leverage a leaky service to establish
external communications. Or, the provider might change a service's default
configuration from restrictive to permissive policies, blindly exposing you to
risk. These are not just theoretical scenarios — attackers are already
leveraging these capabilities.

Compare this to an on-prem data center, where you are in control of software
updates. You would not install software that you did not intend to use, as it
would expose you to more risk and more work. On-prem data centers tend to have
the opposite problem: known vulnerabilities are not patched quickly enough. You
might spend a lot of time and money deciding which software patches are critical
so that you can reduce your attack surface to the greatest possible extent with
the minimum possible number of software updates.


PROTECTING YOUR CLOUD

Understanding the structural and operational differences between on-premises and
cloud operations is essential. To start, while it may seem business-friendly to
allow each business unit to choose its preferred cloud platform, each new cloud
comes with substantial additional work to secure it.

Ignoring the risks, including training and staffing priorities, will expose you
to threats when many advanced attackers are focusing on your cloud footprint.
Today's innovative cloud attacks will be tomorrow's run-of-the-mill breaches.

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