Cloud Security Best Practices
Security considerations and controls for cloud environments including shared responsibility and configuration management.
Cloud Security Best Practices
Shared Responsibility Review
Understanding who is responsible for what:
| Control Area | IaaS | PaaS | SaaS | |--------------|------|------|------| | Data security | Customer | Customer | Customer | | Application | Customer | Customer | Provider | | Operating system | Customer | Provider | Provider | | Network | Shared | Provider | Provider | | Physical | Provider | Provider | Provider |
Identity and Access Management
Best Practices
- Federate with corporate IdP
- Implement strong MFA
- Use just-in-time access
- Regular access reviews
- Privileged access management
Common Mistakes
- Over-privileged accounts
- Shared credentials
- No MFA for privileged access
- Stale access rights
Data Protection
Encryption
- Encryption at rest (customer-managed keys)
- Encryption in transit (TLS 1.3)
- Key management strategy
- Key rotation procedures
Data Classification
- Identify sensitive data
- Apply appropriate controls
- Monitor data movement
- Implement DLP
Network Security
Segmentation
- Virtual private clouds
- Network security groups
- Micro-segmentation
- Private endpoints
Traffic Control
- Web application firewalls
- DDoS protection
- API gateways
- Traffic inspection
Configuration Management
Security Baseline
- CIS Benchmarks
- Provider best practices
- Industry standards
- Regular assessment
Posture Management
- Cloud security posture management (CSPM)
- Configuration scanning
- Drift detection
- Automated remediation
Monitoring and Logging
Requirements
- Enable cloud audit logs
- Centralize log collection
- Retain appropriately
- Implement alerting
Key Events to Monitor
- Authentication failures
- Privilege changes
- Configuration changes
- Data access
- API activity
Common Misconfigurations
- Public storage buckets
- Excessive permissions
- Disabled logging
- Unencrypted data
- Missing MFA
- Open security groups
- Exposed management interfaces
Incident Response
- Cloud-specific playbooks
- Forensic collection
- Provider coordination
- Isolation procedures
- Recovery from cloud