Cloud risk management is the process of actively and iteratively identifying threats within modern cloud service models—such as single-cloud, multi-cloud, or hybrid-cloud infrastructure—before prioritizing these risks and vulnerabilities and taking necessary remediation actions.
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. Let’s get started.
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The phases of cloud risk management
In effective cloud risk management, there are four essential steps:
Identifying assets: The first step is identifying cloud resources that might have a potential impact on business continuity if and when their integrity, confidentiality, or availability is compromised.
Identifying potential threats: Next, it’s important to understand the cloud threat landscape’s relationship to the assets identified in step 1. Leveraging enhanced threat modeling and identifying security incidents and vulnerabilities that map to threats being exploited in the wild are the best ways to make sure teams see the full scope of the threat landscape.
Prioritizing risks: Based on the blast radius and evolution of identified threats, it’s critical to prioritize them and add contextual information. Adding contextual information provides the necessary background required to mitigate these risks. Active monitoring and reporting on the threats should also be a part of this process.
Taking actions: Finally, implement patches for vulnerabilities, ensure proper access with strict IAM policies, put stricter security controls and firewall rules in place, and take other appropriate remediation measures.
On-premises risk vs. cloud risk
There are key differences when it comes to managing on-premises risks and cloud risks. One of the most crucial differences between the two is the location of the data center. With on-premises systems, companies are responsible for managing their own physical data centers—and maintaining the security of those data centers. Alternatively, when it comes to the cloud, security responsibilities are shared between the cloud provider and the customer.
One commonality between on-premises and cloud-based solutions? Both have profound risk profiles, especially when it comes to scalability, data visibility, and the shared responsibility model. Let’s take a closer look at how they stack up:
Scalability: With on-premises systems, scaling up often necessitates purchasing new hardware. The cloud, on the other hand, is inherently scalable. Customers pay for what they use without having to provision hardware separately,
Data visibility: Monitoring on-premises systems is easier for IT teams because they have full and privileged access to all the assets under their management. This isn’t the case for the cloud. Although most cloud service providers offer enhanced monitoring solutions, there are still some blind spots that can make data visibility fragmented when working with a hybrid- or multiple-cloud service model.
Shared responsibility models: As we’ve seen, with on-premises systems, organizations take 100% of the responsibility for securing infrastructure and applications. In turn, this demands dedicated workers and sophisticated software that streamlines managing and monitoring security across the entire infrastructure.
With the adoption of the cloud, security responsibilities are shared between the cloud vendor and the organization. The vendor is responsible for security of the cloud, while organizations are responsible for security within the cloud, which can ultimately lighten the load for organizations.
Apart from the similarities and differences mentioned above, there are multiple cloud security risks that depend on the nature of the cloud ecosystem in use.
The right tools and technologies to manage cloud risk
Because of the cloud’s inherent complexities, it’s essential to leverage cloud risk management solutions that help you maintain a healthy security posture. Let’s take a look at some essential tools and technologies:
Cloud native application protection platform (CNAPPs)
A CNAPP is a comprehensive suite of products that continuously monitor cloud environments to detect threats. AS an end-to-end solution, a CNAPP typically includes the following:
Cloud security posture management (CSPM): CSPM tools are responsible for monitoring cloud applications for misconfigurations, compliance standards, and other potential risks. These tools also provide visibility into security incidents, identify security gaps, and offer remediation guidance by automatically assessing cloud infrastructure against best practices and industry standards.
Vulnerability management: CNAPPs continuously scan cloud workloads (including containers and virtual machines) for known vulnerabilities. CSPM solutions also prioritize vulnerabilities according to their severity, exploitability, and potential impact on business continuity.
Cloud workload protection platforms (CWPPs): CWPPs are responsible for protecting workloads running on the cloud, including containers, virtual machines, and serverless functions. Wiz’s CWPP offers agentless scanning and runtime protection, ensuring the security of the application runtime from development to production.
Best practices for managing cloud risk
To stay ahead of the security curve, put robust practices in place to manage cloud risks efficiently and effectively:
1. Develop a comprehensive risk management strategy
Implementing a strategic plan to identify all cloud resources and then performing threat modeling and vulnerability scanning are key parts of assessing risk. With this information, you can efficiently prioritize risks you identify and come up with a comprehensive solution.
To strengthen your systems, take steps like implementing robust security layers, enforcing stricter IAM policies, and controlling access to cloud resources based on the principle of least privilege.
2. Use a configuration management tool
Modern toolings are versatile and can be customized to suit your needs. Still, managing configurations on your own can be challenging and often leads to misconfigurations or overlooked best practices. Investing in a configuration management tool ensures cloud resources are appropriately configured according to your requirements (and also in adherence to industry standards).
3. Leverage continuous monitoring and incident response
Deploy a fully equipped CNAPP solution that offers CSPM, CWPP, vulnerability management, CIEM, KSPM, DSPM, and CDR to continuously monitor your resources across cloud environments. Implement SIEM solutions that help aggregate application log data and provide real-time alerts on any suspicious activities, notifying security teams right away so that they can respond.
4. Implement a zero-trust architecture
It’s a well-known tenet of cybersecurity that no resource—whether within or outside the network—should be trusted, and every request should be treated as if it originated from an untrusted network. All access requests must be authorized and authenticated based on identity, location, and the sensitivity of the resource. Additionally, ensure granular access by leveraging the principle of least privilege.
5. Emphasize employee training and awareness
Continuous learning and improvement is an important means of developing a security-aware culture. Comprehensive knowledge of cloud security empowers teams to deal with security branches if and when they occur.
How Wiz helps manage cloud risk
Wiz is a leader in the field of cloud risk management. With our cloud security posture management (CSPM) tool, we offer security for everything you build and run in the cloud, including full visibility and alerting on data breaches, compliance standards and failures, and misconfigurations.
Some key features of Wiz CSPM are:
Continuous risk assessment and monitoring: Wiz continuously monitors your resources and scans for threats, with complete coverage for multiple cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure, Alibaba, and more).
Contextual threat detection: Connect the dots with real-time threat signals and cloud activity in a unified view that allows you to visualize attacker movement, empowering security teams to respond immediately and minimize the potential impact of a breach.
Automated remediation: For each threat detected, Wiz provides guidance steps for security analysts to reduce your attack surface.
Case studies
Fiverr, an online marketplace for freelance entrepreneurs, faced multiple challenges when they scaled up their cloud infrastructure. Fiverr wanted to implement a solution that provided a full overview of their cloud security posture with strong contextual prioritization of risks to help them scale.
Wiz, with its contextual graph correlation, helped strengthen their security posture and provided comprehensive visibility into their cloud resources, along with the automatic enforcement of security controls and policies.
FullStory, a digital analytics provider, wanted to implement a company-wide cloud security solution that would help them monitor hard-to-detect threats and also increase their risk visibility. By enabling runtime context with the Wiz Runtime Sensor on their Kubernetes cluster, FullStory was able to correlate security issues across the cloud ecosystem and effectively prioritize risks for their engineering team.
Read more about the Fiverr and FullStory case studies here.
Conclusion
Given the complexity of the cloud, detecting and managing your risks is of the utmost importance. Although cloud vendors provide an initial layer of security, there are always some blind spots that open the door to attackers. That’s where Wiz’s cloud native application protection platform comes into play.
With continuous threat detection, advanced threat detection, and automated remediation, Wiz’s CNAPP is tailored to mitigate risks and vulnerabilities across your cloud ecosystem. To learn more and see our ground-breaking CNAPP in action, schedule a personalized demo with the Wiz team.
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