What is a Cloud Security Assessment?

A key enabler of digital transformation for an organization is their cloud computing capabilities. Any cloud footprint transforms business, private and governmental organizations, enabling new levels of speed, agility and access. However, like any emerging technology, the cloud computing requires heightened thinking from business leaders and even traditional IT professionals, to address the evolving set of security threats spawning from Cloud computing infrastructure and its rapid adoption and use.
To address the cloud security challenges, at CyberSRC®, we propose an approach in 3 steps: assess, protect, detect & respond. To protect your cloud environments, you must first identify the ‘what’, the associated risks and requirements.

Applicability

The number of enterprises migrating their applications and data to the cloud has been increasing consistently. A number of studies suggest that the cloud platforms provide enterprises with a more secure outlet for storing applications and data. But no enterprise can leverage the benefits of cloud computing without ensuring the security of its software applications and data. They need robust security solutions that meet the frequency and speed of cloud deployment. Also, they must leverage the latest security tools and implement advanced security protocols to eliminate the disastrous impact of targeted security attacks.
There are also a number of reasons why enterprises must focus extensively on cloud security:

• Growing Instances of Security Breaches
• Security Options Differ from One Cloud Service Provider to Another
• Many Factors affect the Data Storage Location
• Enterprises Must Prevent Unauthorized Data Access
• Enterprises Must Eliminate Chances of Data Loss
• Enterprises cannot Transfer Risk related to Data Loss and Theft

Objective

Each business has its own IT environment that it depends upon to function at peak performance. Conducting a thorough IT assessment means you’ll have your entire system analyzed and evaluated with written recommendations made to help apprise you of the state of your technology.
The ultimate goal of an IT assessment is to identify areas in need of improvement in regard to your IT team, infrastructure, applications, processes, and available resources.

The cloud environment is constantly changing and it makes it difficult to rapidly detect and respond to threats. A cloud security assessment (CSA) can help you identify and mitigate security risks in cloud computing. It covers the 11 major security threats identified by the Cloud Security Alliance:

1. Data breaches
2. Misconfiguration and Inadequate Change Control
3. Lack of Cloud Security Architecture and Strategy
4. Insufficient Identity, Credential, Access and Key Management
5. Account hijacking
6. Insider Threat
7. Insecure Interfaces and APIs
8. Weak Control Plane

Benefits of Cloud Assessments

Assessing your business, cloud vendors, and dependencies can have major benefits for your organization:

Reduce Risk
With cloud security reviews and assessments, you’ll have a view into any possible vulnerabilities

Integrations Between Apps and Infrastructure
With cloud assessments you’ll get action items on replacing, upgrading, or modernizing existing tools to integrate with your new cloud environment

Gain Efficiencies
Cloud assessments can lead to more productive team structures

Accelerate Cloud Migrations
Cloud assessments allow your team to identify and overcome barriers to success

Save Money
Find valuable savings with cloud assessments and cloud vendor management

Disaster Recovery That Works
Disaster recovery testing gives you confidence that if the worst should happen, your business can recover.

Approach

Vendor Assessments

We can conduct assessments of potential cloud vendors to determine their suitability to provide services in line with your needs. Some of the key factors to be included:

  • Regulatory compliance, determining whether the supplier is either compliant with necessary regulatory requirements or is willing to undergo necessary audits to become compliant
  • Data integrity, ensuring that a prospective vendor properly segregates their data in dedicated hosting setups
  • Data recovery services: does the vendor have the capability of restoring information in the event of an outage?
  • Cloud data security assessments, determining whether or not your data is secure and the risk of loss is minimized
  • Monitoring capability: do they offer robust monitoring, reporting and ability to investigate issues?

Technology Assessment

We will work to understand your existing infrastructure and determine what your technical requirements are. Some of the factors we take into account include:

  • Existing usage patterns to anticipate what type of cloud-based resources you require
  • Determine the cost to move services
  • Work on migration timeframes
  • Identify the pros and cons of moving services to the cloud and help you decide if certain operations should remain on-site

Service Analysis

There are many cloud services available, and determining which ones are optimal for your needs is essential. As part of our cloud assessment services, we can help you select among the various options by both features and cost point.

Process Impact

During a cloud assessment, we can study your current processes and help you figure out the potential impact that the cloud may have.

      Why CyberSRC®?

      Established in January 2018, CyberSRC® Consultancy offers the full machination of cyber security services ranging from threat intelligence, VMS to general advisory services in areas pertaining to Cyber security such as vulnerability attacks, compliance, and cyber security regulations, and laws. We are into system audits such as ISNP Audits, NBFC Audits, UCB Audits, PPI Audits, and SEBI Audits. We provide our solutions with better accountability. We are a certified assurance firm. We are an ISO 27001 certified organization, backed by a very diverse and dynamic team which have a combined experience.