Welcome to CloudSec Academy, your guide to navigating the alphabet soup of cloud security acronyms and industry jargon. Cut through the noise with clear, concise, and expertly crafted content covering fundamentals to best practices.
Cloud attacks are malicious activities that target cloud data and infrastructure. By exploiting cloud vulnerabilities, attackers try to access and tamper with cloud data by exfiltrating sensitive information or disrupting operations.
Cloud security architecture is a broad set of principles designed to guide the implementation of security controls, practices, and solutions within a cloud computing environment.
Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) has emerged as a proactive approach to cybersecurity, enabling security teams to identify, assess, and mitigate threats—in real-time, which is key. However, despite its growing popularity, there are still many questions surrounding CTEM. In this blog post, we'll delve into the top seven questions that cybersecurity practitioners often ask about CTEM—see if you’ve been looking for answers to these yourself!
Unified Vulnerability Management (UVM) has undergone a significant evolution in recent years, driven by technological advancements, changing threat landscapes, and increased regulatory demands. In this post, we explore how UVM has evolved and where we believe it’s headed in the next few years.
Identity and Access Management (IAM) security is a set of policies and technologies that help organizations control which identities can have access permissions to resources, data, systems, and applications.
Cloud management refers to the monitoring, maintenance, and operation of data, apps, and infrastructure hosted on the cloud.
In this article, we’ll explore the ins and outs of NIST 800-171 compliance, including how it fits within the broader NIST standards and who needs to comply. We’ll also discuss some cloud security best practices to help you keep data safe.
Learn how and why the financial industry is often targeted and discuss best practices for remediating these evolving security challenges.
Discover essential AWS security best practices to protect your cloud environment, reduce risks, and ensure compliance with ease.
Cloud security refers to a set of policies, controls, procedures, and technologies that work together to protect cloud-based systems, data, and infrastructure.
In this article, we’ll look at vulnerability assessments that can help you find and fix critical vulnerabilities—built for cloud.
A security misconfiguration is when incorrect security settings are applied to devices, applications, or data in your infrastructure.
IAM plays a central role in defining and managing security permissions and access policies, which is why it’s a key attack surface.
Shadow IT is an employee’s unauthorized use of IT services, applications, and resources that aren’t controlled by—or visible to—an organization’s IT department.
Vulnerability management involves continuously identifying, managing, and remediating vulnerabilities in IT environments, and is an integral part of any security program.
In this post, we’ll explore some of the challenges that can complicate cloud data classification, along with the benefits that come with this crucial step—and how a DSPM tool can help make the entire process much simpler.
8 essential cloud security best practices that every organization should start with
Patch management is the process of planning, testing, and applying updates to software systems and applications to address vulnerabilities, fix bugs, and improve overall system performance.
Data access governance (DAG) is a structured approach to creating and enforcing policies that control access to data. It’s an essential component of an enterprise’s overall data governance strategy.
Cloud data security is the practice of safeguarding sensitive data, intellectual property, and secrets from unauthorized access, tampering, and data breaches. It involves implementing security policies, applying controls, and adopting technologies to secure all data in cloud environments.
SaaS security posture management (SSPM) is a toolset designed to secure SaaS apps by identifying misconfigurations, managing permissions, and ensuring regulatory compliance across your organization’s digital estate.
A data security policy is a document outlining an organization's guidelines, rules, and standards for managing and protecting sensitive data assets.
A cloud operating model is a set of practices and procedures that organizations follow for effective management of their cloud resources.
Public cloud security is a set of procedures and policies that secure public cloud environments like AWS, Azure, and GCP.
Enterprise cloud security is the comprehensive set of practices, policies, and controls used by enterprises to protect their data, applications, and infrastructure in the cloud.
A data risk assessment is a full evaluation of the risks that an organization’s data poses. The process involves identifying, classifying, and triaging threats, vulnerabilities, and risks associated with all your data.
In this article, we’ll discuss typical cloud security pitfalls and how AWS uses CSPM solutions to tackle these complexities and challenges, from real-time compliance tracking to detailed risk assessment.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at everything you need to know about data flow mapping: its huge benefits, how to create one, and best practices, and we’ll also provide sample templates using real-life examples.
Data security controls are security policies, technologies, and procedures that protect data from unauthorized access, alteration, or loss
Defense in depth (DiD)—also known as layered defense—is a cybersecurity strategy that aims to safeguard data, networks, systems, and IT assets by using multiple layers of security controls.
Cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM) is a security process that helps organizations manage and control access rights to cloud resources.
With a CNAPP, your team is empowered to pick and choose solutions that best fit your security capability and cost requirements. This article reviews the best open-source CNAPP tools for 2024.
In this post, we’ll find out why the sensitive data discovery process is so important—along with some of the main challenges. We’ll see how companies tackle the daunting task of classifying their data.
Uncover the top cloud security issues affecting organizations today. Learn how to address cloud security risks, threats, and challenges to protect your cloud environment.
Cloud security monitoring refers to the continuous observation and analysis of cloud-based resources, services, and infrastructure to detect security threats, vulnerabilities, and compliance risks.
Cloud infrastructure security describes the strategies, policies, and measures that organizations implement to protect cloud-based systems, data, and infrastructure from threats and vulnerabilities.
Data sprawl refers to the dramatic proliferation of enterprise data across IT environments, which can lead to management challenges and security risks.
Cloud identity security is the practice of safeguarding digital identities and the sensitive cloud infrastructure and data they gatekeep from unauthorized access and misuse.
Vulnerability scanning is an integral component of every vulnerability management program, providing security teams with insights needed to address vulnerabilities before they become attack vectors. When conducted regularly, vulnerability assessments offer asset discovery and visibility, attack surface management, and compliance enforcement.
Multi Cloud Security is the combination of strategies, controls, and technologies designed to address the complex challenges of a multi cloud environment.
Cloud data security is the comprehensive strategy of preventing data loss or leakage in the cloud from security threats like unauthorized access, data breaches, and insider threats.
The principle of least privilege (PoLP) is a cybersecurity concept in which users, processes, and devices are granted the minimum access and permissions necessary to perform their tasks.
In this article, we will explore the challenges of managing permissions, the risks associated with improper access controls, and how major cloud providers handle permissions. We’ll also take a look at best practices and advanced solutions like cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM).
In this article, we’ll explore what cloud risk management entails and take an in-depth look at the tools that can keep your systems safe.
Vulnerability scanning is the process of detecting and evaluating security flaws in IT systems, networks, and software.
Data security compliance is a critical aspect of data governance that involves adhering to the security-centric rules and regulations set forth by supervisory and regulatory bodies, including federal agencies.
Data leakage is the unchecked exfiltration of organizational data to a third party. It occurs through various means such as misconfigured databases, poorly protected network servers, phishing attacks, or even careless data handling.
Open Policy Agent (OPA) is an open-source, versatile policy engine that facilitates unified and context-aware policy enforcement across various cloud environments.
Cloud app security involves ensuring that both cloud-native and cloud-based apps are protected from vulnerabilities through the use of proper tools and practices.
Vulnerability prioritization is the practice of assessing and ranking identified security vulnerabilities based on critical factors such as severity, potential impact, exploitability, and business context. This ranking helps security experts and executives avoid alert fatigue to focus remediation efforts on the most critical vulnerabilities.
In this article, we’ll explore the top 9 OSS CSPM tools available today, each with its unique capabilities and benefits for helping organizations identify cloud misconfigurations, prevent security breaches, and ensure compliance with industry standards.
Database security is the process of identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks that can compromise the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data.
The vulnerability management lifecycle consists of six key stages: identification and assessment, prioritization, remediation and mitigation, verification and validation, reporting, and monitoring and improvement.
Exposure management is when companies identify, assess, and mitigate the risk posed by exposed resources, such as networks, applications, data, and other assets.
A vulnerability management program is a structured, continuous approach to identifying, evaluating, and mitigating security weaknesses across an organization's IT ecosystem.
Linux security ensures the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of Linux-based systems and protects them from hackers, brute-force attacks, and other cyber threats.
Cloud network security is a combination of tools, processes, and policies that protect your cloud environments.
As cloud adoption grows, the only way to mitigate risks and access the full spectrum of cloud capabilities is to prioritize visibility. Read on to learn more about cloud visibility—and how to achieve it.
File integrity monitoring (FIM) is a set of security practices that continuously verify the authenticity of file systems, operating system components, applications, and databases.
CIS benchmarks are publicly available security roadmaps offering core recommendations to guide organizations on hardening their IT systems against cyber threats.
This article offers an extensive examination of Azure environments’ most pressing security risks along with suggested approaches for effectively mitigating these challenges.
Cloud sprawl is a phenomenon that involves the unmanaged growth of cloud-based resources and services.
Discover the similarities between CSPM and DSPM, what factors set them apart, and which one is the best choice for your organization’s needs.
Cloud migration security is a facet of cybersecurity that protects organizations from security risks during a transition to cloud environments from legacy infrastructure, like on-premises data centers.
13 essential best practices for every organization + the common tools and services that can support them
A Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) is a security solution that unifies all cloud security capabilities to protect cloud environments.
Common security risks associated with Terraform and the 6 essential best practices for terraform security.
8 open-source vulnerability management tools and their features, categorized by use case
This blog explores the significance of security in Azure environments and provides an overview of native as well as third-party security tools available to improve an organization’s Azure security stance.
10 native tools for IAM, data protection, network security, threat detection, and compliance management.
This post discusses CSPM and SSPM in depth to reveal their respective use cases. You'll also learn how CSPM and SSPM complement each other to strengthen your overall security posture.
This article examines common AWS security challenges, including identity and access control gaps, data exposure risks, and monitoring blind spots.
In this article, we'll compare CIEM and IAM to explain how these crucial techniques help reduce your attack surface.
Shadow data is any data that is created, stored, or shared outside of an organization's formal IT environment and management policies.
Explore common security missteps in detail and learn actionable recommendations to help organizations strengthen their GCP environments.
The shared responsibility model is a framework establishing cloud security responsibilities between cloud service providers (AWS, GCP, Azure) and customers.
Serverless security is the extra layer of protection designed for applications built on a serverless architecture. In this type of cloud computing, you write the code (functions) but the cloud provider handles the servers. This creates a different security approach.
A cloud security strategy is the combination of the measures, tools, policies, and procedures used to secure cloud data, applications, and infrastructure.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) describes the process of continuously detecting and remediating risks in cloud environments and services (e.g. S3 buckets w/ public read access). CSPM tools automatically evaluate cloud configurations against industry best practices, regulatory requirements, and security policies to ensure that cloud environments are secure and properly managed.
External Attack Surface Management (EASM) refers to the process of identifying, analyzing, and managing an organization's external attack surface.
Risk-based vulnerability management is a vulnerability management approach that prioritizes vulnerabilities that pose the greatest risk to an organization.
This article will refresh your knowledge of AWS and S3 security basics and then move into the best practices you need to get started with S3 security.
Cloud encryption is the process of transforming data into a secure format that's unreadable to anyone who doesn't have the key to decode it.
CSPM focuses on securing cloud infrastructure by identifying and remediating misconfigurations, while CIEM centers on managing and securing user identities and access permissions within cloud environments, addressing threats related to unauthorized access and entitlements.
Data security posture management (DSPM) is a solution designed to continuously monitor an organization's data security policies and procedures to detect vulnerabilities and potential risks.
Learn where CNAPP and CSPM overlap, where they differ, and which one is right for your organization.
Learn where CSPM and CWPP overlap, where they differ, and which one is right for your organization.
Cloud governance entails the policies, processes, and controls an organization puts in place to ensure the effective and secure management of its cloud resources and services.
An attack surface is refers to all the potential entry points an attacker could exploit to gain unauthorized access to a system, network, or data.
Security posture is the overall defensive strength of an enterprise’s IT infrastructure, which comprises hardware, software, practices, policies, and personnel.
Explore the security roles your tools should cover, then outline the key tool types to help you build your security workflows.
Learn to navigate the complexities of cloud security, including the knowledge and tools required to build a robust and proactive defense against ever-evolving cyber threats.
Cloud native security refers to the practices, tools, and policies that protect cloud native applications and infrastructures.
Cloud vulnerability management is the continuous process of identifying, classifying, prioritizing, and remediating security vulnerabilities in your cloud environment.
Agentless and agent-based systems are both valid approaches for cloud security. There is no single right answer when deciding which to choose, as each comes with its own advantages and drawbacks.
To help you make an informed decision, we've crafted a comprehensive comparison of AWS and Azure security, empowering you to select the cloud provider that seamlessly integrates with your unique needs.
Hybrid cloud security is a combination of strategies, technologies, and teams working in unison to secure an organization’s hybrid cloud environment.
AWS security groups (SGs) are virtual firewalls for your EC2 instances that control both inbound and outbound traffic.
Private cloud security is a term that describes the tools and techniques used to secure private cloud environments.
Between its reliability and its robust scalability, Azure has become an integral part of many organizations' cloud architecture. Learn how to secure your Azure deployment with these 5 essential best practices.
