While many organisations are adopting multi-cloud strategies, managing security in various clouds has become cumbersome. While using multiple cloud providers provides flexibility and scalability for businesses, it can also present security challenges requiring holistic strategies to reduce risks, maintain compliance, and visibility.
Therefore, in this guide, we will elaborate on the several advantages of multi-cloud security, challenges, and best practices. Additionally, we will look into how an organisation can create a secure multi-cloud architecture. Whether you are new to multi-cloud or seeking a better multi-cloud way, this guide will teach you every guideline that will help you navigate through cloud security.
What is Multi-Cloud Security?
Multi-cloud security is the term that refers to practice, tools, and strategies used to protect data and applications in multiple clouds. Instead of using a particular vendor’s cloud security procedures, a company needs a complete security framework that spans all cloud services to entirely secure the applications and data. Securing everything ranging from data encryption and access management through the monitoring security posture and responding to threats in real time also comes under multi-cloud security.
Benefits of a Multi-Cloud Strategy
A multi-cloud strategy enables benefits that, if leveraged, could disrupt cloud operations. By employing different cloud service providers, enterprises can optimise their resources, enhance resiliency, and find the best pricing. Multi-cloud security growth derives some of its support owing to:
Flexibility and Optimisation
Of the many advantages that accrue from a multi-cloud strategy, flexibility to customise the cloud environment for its business needs is paramount. Different cloud providers have different mechanisms, price points, and performance capabilities. Multicloud allows businesses to choose the best services from each provider according to the constraints for different workloads on a case-to-case basis.
Some applications would, for instance, be more efficiently run on AWS’s highly scalable infrastructure, while others would benefit from the more specialised machine learning capabilities of Google Cloud. Hence, businesses can choose the right platform for the right workload for optimal cloud performance and costs. This inherently provides the flexibility so that the organisation is not locked into a single cloud vendor and can change or scale cloud resources depending on its performance or business needs.
Risk Mitigation and Resilience
A multi-cloud strategy helps businesses mitigate risk by reducing deep dependency on a single provider. For instance, if one cloud provider runs into downtime or has security vulnerabilities, workloads can be conveniently moved to another provider with as little disruption as is possible. This kind of resilience, especially for businesses requiring constant uptime and data availability.
Similarly, it reduces the risks of sudden vendor lock-in by spreading workloads across different cloud providers. Future business changes or alterations to pricing models would enable organisations to negotiate or migrate workloads to another environment without being challenged by heavy obstacles. Such a strategic approach maintains the continuity of business operations while allowing a lot of maneuvering space for organisations to respond to the changes battering their industries.
Enhanced Cloud Security and Compliance
Multi-cloud security adds another layer of security because all security measures are stretched across multiple cloud platforms. Each provider comes with different security features such as advanced threat detection, data encryption, remote access management tools, to name a few. Integrating all these features into one security architecture provides the company with a more robust security posture.
Furthermore, a multi-cloud environment offers better compliance management. By dispersing data across geographically disparate cloud platforms, a company can ensure that its operations conform to region-specific regulations such as GDPR in the EU or CCPA in California. This geographic flexibility allows exercising more control of data sovereignty and privacy requirements, ensuring that businesses are compliant with international regulatory standards.
Common Multi-Cloud Security Challenges
While the benefits of a multi-cloud strategy are clear, organisations must also navigate several security challenges to ensure their multi-cloud environment is secure, compliant, and optimally configured. Below are the most common multi-cloud security challenges businesses face:
Data Protection and Privacy
Having data across several clouds makes it, at times, impossible to maintain a consistent level of data protection and privacy. Each cloud service provider tends to have its security mechanisms, thus complicating uniform data protection processes across the entire environment.
Hence, companies should enforce sound encryption policies, combined with data monitoring through the use of cloud access security brokers (CASB), as data moves in and out of different platforms. Furthermore, compliance with external data privacy laws-with strict guidelines on the handling, storage, and transfer of personal and sensitive data across clouds-such as GDPR and HIPAA, should always be upheld.
Visibility and Control
Gaining an all-encompassing view of security posture through cloud platforms in a multi-cloud environment could be huge. However, without proper visibility, business has little prospect of detecting threats in real time and responding to them. Security gaps can open up because of who controls access to data and applications in this multi-cloud scenario.
To counter these problems, organisations should implement consolidation cloud security posture management (CSPM). These tools give a single view of cloud configurations, perceived vulnerabilities, and uniform policy application across platforms for security monitoring and visibility over every cloud environment. Subsequently, such businesses also need to place-for-make application of zero trust security models, where user identities and access levels are constantly verified for almost everyone’s location or usage of a cloud platform.
Skill Gaps and Resource Constraints
Specialised knowledge and understanding are required to manage multi-cloud security. As organisations expand their use of the services cloud, they will likely find it hard to find human resources for addressing the complex security challenges that arise. Often, such organisations contend with a shortage of qualified people in the discipline of cloud security, hence making it impossible for them to keep pace with changing threats..
Training in skills required to close the gap needs to be arranged for existing IT staff while taking on board managed security services that provide excellent knowledge for multi-cloud security. Dedicated experts managing cloud security for organisations will ensure that organisations have looked forward to the future of safe cloud environments kept compliant.
Complex Security Configuration and Integration
Integration and management of security measures across multi-platforms can become a difficult task, with each cloud provider having its own security or protocols, tools, and configurations. A business may face challenges in implementing uniform security policies or moving data from one cloud provider to another.
An answer could lie in the use of automated cloud security management tools that simplify configuring, monitoring, and securing multi-cloud environments, allowing organisations to enforce uniform policies, automate many of their ongoing security tasks, and identify security gaps that could escalate to major risks almost in real-time.
Best Practices for Multi-Cloud Security
The security challenges of managing different platforms can become an entirely new challenge for businesses by multiplying the effort into managing security across cloud platforms. By adhering to best practices, organisations can mitigate risk, reinforce compliance, and maintain an overall security posture. The following are the best practices that are preeminent in multi-cloud security:
Establish Unified Security Policies Across Providers
One of the most efficacious ways to manage multi-cloud security is to set unified security policies that apply across all cloud platforms. Providers offer different security features and configurations for their offerings, making security uniformity essential to minimise vulnerabilities.
Companies should design a centralised way of applying security policies, such as file encryption, access control, and identity management, and ensure that they are uniformly practiced across clouds. A cloud security governance approach allows for compliance with industry regulations and minimises the risk of gaps in security coverage.
Implement Advanced Threat Detection Tools
In a multi-cloud framework, any threats might arise at any point across all the different clouds. The organisations, therefore, need to have advanced threat detection tools, making real-time visibility into the entire multi-cloud infrastructure and guarding against potential vulnerabilities.
Using such tools like the cloud workload protection platforms (CWPP) or the cloud security posture management (CSPM) would help clients to detect the issues of security with several cloud providers. These features can be activated to automatically detect when anomalies, misconfigurations, or suspicious activities occur, enabling quick responses to potential threats and maintaining a healthy cloud security position.
Enforce Zero-Trust Security Models
In a zero-trust security model, the access control mechanism is stringently enforced in all cloud environments. In this design, organisations authenticate every user and device trying to access the network, irrespective of being outside the organisation’s walls. In even those instances where users are connected to the corporate network, they are asked to authenticate before being granted access to the company’s critical resources.
Zero-trust tenets merged with any multi-cloud strategy will allow for the minimisation of threats from both inside and outside sources. Doing so will ensure that only people who are authorised receive access to sensitive data and applications, minimising the risk of a security breach.
Conduct Regular Compliance Audits
Compliance with industrial standards and regulations remains of paramount importance for multi-cloud security. Different cloud providers have their own compliance certifications, but organisations must ensure that they meet the regulatory requirements specifically imposed on their industry, be it GDPR, SOC 2, ISO 27001, or anything else.
Regular compliance audits should be performed to verify that all cloud platforms follow appropriate security and privacy protocols. By continually monitoring and auditing their multi-cloud environments, organisations can stand clear of fines for non-compliance and keep their customers’ trust.
Integrate Infor SunSystems Cloud for Enhanced Security
Infor SunSystems Cloud grants a powerful option to the enterprises wanting a comprehensive and secure solution for their financial data in a multi-cloud environment. Infor SunSystems employs integration across various cloud providers, ensuring that data are encrypted, secure financial management done, and regulatory compliance achieved.
This integration cuts across the clouds but further offers an opportunity for businesses to spread their cloud operations while improving the overall security for a well-guarded security posture across their entire multi-cloud environment. Organisations must ensure their sensitive financial data protection-from secure financial management using Infor SunSystems Cloud, meeting all industry standards in incorporating cutting-edge security features.
Learn more about Infor SunSystems Cloud here.
Multi-Cloud Security Architectures
With the increased adoption of multi-cloud strategies by enterprises, it is ever more critical to distinguish the secure and efficient multi-cloud security architecture. A well-architected multi-cloud environment thus ensures that data, applications, and workloads are securely managed and distributed across cloud platforms. Below is an overview of the classic components and principles for building a resilient multi-cloud security architecture:
Centralised Security Management and Visibility
This centralised platform would provide visibility into all cloud resources-from computing and storage to networking and security-to manage security across several platforms in a multi-cloud environment. Such platforms will allow organisations to monitor security policies and governance enforcement and detect potential vulnerabilities or misconfiguration in real-time while using a safety management solution that streamlines an organisation’s multi-cloud architecture, ensuring every cloud resource is secured appropriately and reducing the risk of security breaches.
Integrated Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Unified Identity and Access Administration (IAM) allows for solid control over cloud resources. IAM systems ensure that, from commercial cloud platforms, users can access appropriate data and applications. Since most enterprise security involves protecting some information that is technically lethal on the outside, it leads to a need for control over user authentication and dramatisation across different cloudy environments.
An integrated IAM strategy across these platforms means that organisations can easily implement least privilege access policies for specific user accounts. This means restricting user access to the minimum needed to be able to complete a job without unnecessary additions. This approach reduces the overall attack surface and strengthens cloud security.
Secure Cloud Networking
Multi-cloud security consists of networking. So, businesses must start secure cloud networking by using protocols that keep travel safe for data and applications as they traverse between different cloud platforms. This would include VPNs, secure cloud firewall protection, and native cloud networking solutions that encrypt traffic among cloud platforms while protecting the data from being exposed to external threats.
A very secure isolated network must be created between clouds to prevent unauthorised access as well as keep confidentiality and integrity of such data. Also, network segmentation so that sensitive data and resources become isolated from others that are less critical will reduce breaches even further.
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
This would be a tremendous benefit to the multi-cloud security architecture. Ensure that your business can recover quickly from a crisis or breach. The combined strength of several cloud providers makes businesses able to develop a DR plan wherein downtime is very minimal, and so the risk of business interruption is greatly mitigated.
Multicloud disaster recovery involves replicating critical data and applications across multiple environments, so operations switch quickly to a backup platform in case of outage or breach. Regular and thorough testing or regular drilling on the disaster recovery plan is essential to ensure that organisations are always ready to respond to emergencies.
Continuous Monitoring and Automated Responses
Continuous monitoring is key to ensuring that security issues in a multi-cloud environment are detected early. Using cloud-native monitoring tools combined with automated security responses can help identify threats and vulnerabilities as soon as they emerge. Automated responses, such as patching security flaws or isolating compromised workloads, can significantly reduce the response time and mitigate risks before they escalate.
Finding Your Perfect Multi-Cloud Security Solutions
The rise of multi-cloud strategies brings flexibility and cost benefits but also requires robust multi-cloud security to protect data and ensure compliance. By adopting best practices like zero-trust models, unified security policies, and advanced threat detection, businesses can mitigate risks and secure their cloud environments effectively.
Incorporating secure solutions such as Infor SunSystems Cloud can further strengthen your multi-cloud security strategy, ensuring data protection across all platforms. As cloud security threats evolve, businesses must stay proactive by continuously reviewing and updating their security measures. By focusing on security and compliance, organisations can maximise the potential of their multi-cloud environments while keeping their digital assets safe.
To strengthen your multi-cloud security today and safeguard your business-critical data, contact TRGinternational today to learn more with our tailored solutions.
