Fortifying the Public Cloud: A Case Study
Often, when organizations migrate from on-premises to public cloud environments, security teams want to continue to use the same approach for protecting applications and data. But use of a public cloud, especially multiple public clouds, introduces new attack vectors that require better visibility into what is happening across the entire ecosystem.
Indeed, threats have evolved dramatically over the past few years, and hackers have devised methods to leverage cloud technologies. When data and applications are hosted in the cloud, the number of entry points to the network increases dramatically.
Because public cloud environments broaden the attack surface from which hackers can try to gain access to enterprises’ data and applications, controlling who has permission to access network elements and data is very important.
SundaySky: A Case Study
SundaySky’s video marketing platform provides marketers and customer experience professionals with video-powered content to provide consumers with an exceptional digital experience. Founded in 2006, the company is headquartered in New York City with additional offices in Tel Aviv and Tokyo.
[You may also like: The Move to Multiple Public Clouds Creates Security Silos]
Network elasticity and scalability have always been critical to SundaySky’s business. With customers leveraging the network more during business hours than in the evening, using a cloud-based platform for SundaySky’s network infrastructure benefits the company immensely. SundaySky uses AWS, which provides the ability to scale network capacity to meet spikes in demand and offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model.
But with progress comes new challenges — and new security threats. SundaySky had to comply with various regulations, including HIPAA, regarding the handling and security of data. Multiple AWS environments and accounts meant that SundaySky required a single workload security solution that would:
- Assist with managing access permissions to AWS services and data
- Reduce obsolete/excessive permissions across multiple AWS environments
- Provide a centralized console for management of account updates and timely identification of insecure misconfigurations and compliance assurance
- Protect against data breaches, account takeovers and other attacks while eliminating false positives
To protect its AWS environment and attain improved visibility into account updates and insecure misconfigurations, SundaySky implemented Radware’s Cloud Workload Protection Service (CWPS), an agentless, cloud-native workload security solution.
“Radware’s Cloud Workload Protection provides us with the single pane of glass to manage the permissions and workloads that we were looking for. Being concerned about misconfigurations and potential risks has become a thing of the past. It’s fortified our cloud-based network.” — Shay Reshef, Director of Security, SundaySky
SundaySky’s operation and security teams now leverage CWPS for a single view of accounts and workloads running across their network, in addition to account updates and associated permissions.
[You may also like: Excessive Permissions are Your #1 Cloud Threat]
Previously unidentified workloads and/or outdated accounts have been pinpointed and secured, and CWPS monitors account updates and configuration changes for misconfigurations and excessive permissions, ensuring that SundaySky meets compliance regulations regarding the handling of customer data.
Read Radware’s “2019-2020 Global Application & Network Security Report” to learn more.
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Radware Blog authored by Radware. Read the original post at: https://blog.radware.com/security/cloudsecurity/2020/03/fortifying-the-public-cloud-a-case-study/