What is Hybrid Cloud Security?

Hybrid cloud environments face unique security risks due to their blend of on-prem infrastructure and public cloud services. Hybrid cloud security addresses the challenges of securing these diverse IT environments and ensuring the security of traffic traveling between them over the public Internet.

How Does Hybrid Cloud Security Work?

Hybrid cloud security solutions offer converged security across an organization’s public and private cloud environments. This helps to eliminate the complexity and visibility gaps that could arise if an organization attempted to use different solutions to secure each environment.

Hybrid cloud security focuses on the integration of security visibility and control. Some key elements include:

• Identity and access management (IAM)
• Advanced threat detection and prevention
• Vulnerability scanning
• Network segmentation and microsegmentation
• Cloud workload security
• Configuration management

Private and public cloud environments each have their own security needs, and organizations also need to protect traffic flowing between them. For example, a site-to-site virtual private network (VPN) can provide data encryption and integrity protection for data flowing within a hybrid cloud environment.

The Benefits of Hybrid Cloud Security

Organizations often adopt hybrid cloud environments due to their direct business benefits. With a hybrid cloud, a company can take advantage of the flexibility and scalability of the public cloud and the increased control and simplified compliance offered by private cloud environments.

However, these hybrid cloud environments can come with security challenges if not secured with an integrated hybrid cloud security solution. Some key benefits of robust hybrid cloud security include:

• Reduced Cybersecurity Risk: Attempting to individually secure public and private cloud environments can introduce security gaps and increased complexity. Managing and protecting the entire environment with a single solution reduces the risk of an attacker slipping past undetected.
• Enhanced Efficiency: Public and private cloud environments face many of the same security risks, but the differences in these environments may result in distinct security tools being deployed for each. This redundancy creates additional management overhead and forces security teams to context switch between different solutions when investigating and resolving a security incident.
• Simplified Compliance: Proving compliance requires demonstrating that certain security controls are in place across the organization’s IT environment. With an integrated approach to hybrid cloud security, the security team avoids duplicating efforts across multiple environments.

What are the Key Challenges in Hybrid Cloud Security?

Hybrid cloud environments share many of the same security challenges as either public or private clouds. However, the use of both types of cloud environments introduces additional key challenges, including:

• Disparate Environments: Hybrid clouds combine on-prem and public cloud infrastructure. As a result, some tools may only work in one environment, and each environment may have its own security risks that must be managed.
• Shared Security Responsibility: Hybrid clouds can create a complex relationship between the cloud customer and provider in terms of security. A cloud customer may be wholly responsible for security in their private cloud but share responsibilities with the provider in a private cloud environment.
• Incident Response: Hybrid cloud environments are designed to allow applications and data to move between public and private clouds. This can complicate incident response, especially since cloud customers have limited visibility and access in public cloud environments.
• Regulatory Compliance: Some data protection regulations, such as the GDPR, mandate that data be stored and processed only in particular jurisdictions. Application and data flows between public and private clouds in hybrid clouds can complicate regulatory compliance.
• Lateral Movement: Hybrid cloud environments are designed to permit movement between public and private cloud environments. This can create security concerns if an attacker can compromise a less defended part of an organization’s network and then move laterally to higher-value targets.

Best Practices for Hybrid Cloud Security

Hybrid cloud security can be complex, leaving gaps for attackers to exploit. Some best practices to manage the risks of hybrid cloud environments include:

• Implement Least Privilege Access: Often, cloud users have excessive permissions, increasing the potential damage if their account is compromised by an attacker. Implementing the principle of least privilege — granting users and applications only the permissions needed for their role — reduces the impact of a successful account takeover attack.
• Deploy Consistent Application Security (AppSec): Hybrid clouds are designed to allow applications to move between public and private cloud environments. These applications should have the same defenses in place (WAF, etc.) regardless of deployment location.
• Centralize Cloud Visibility and Management: Public and private cloud environments may have different sets of security monitoring and management tools available. Using a single, comprehensive solution eliminates visibility gaps and enhances the efficiency of the security team.
• Use a Converged Security Platform: Similarly, an organization may deploy specialized solutions for each deployment environment. However, this increases the complexity of security management and incident response and can introduce security gaps.
• Micro-Segment Networks: An attacker who gains access to one part of an organization’s network may be able to move to others without detection. Implementing network segmentation limits what an intruder can access and increases their odds of detection.
• Offer Secure Remote Access: Cloud environments are designed to be accessed remotely, whether by on-prem employees or remote workers. Corporate cloud environments should provide secure remote access solutions, such as zero-trust network access (ZTNA).

Strengthen Your Hybrid Cloud Security With Cato’s SASE Solution

Hybrid cloud environments have their advantages, but they can also introduce significant security challenges for the business. Security teams attempting to monitor and protect these diverse environments commonly need to cope with visibility and security gaps and costly context switching due to a sprawling security architecture.

Cato SASE Cloud offers businesses a way to regain control over the security of their hybrid cloud environments by implementing integrated visibility and security at the network level. With Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), an organization can deploy a converged network security stack — including Secure Web Gateway (SWG), Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), ZTNA, Firewall as a Service (FWaaS), and an Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) — to protect both their public and private cloud infrastructure. To learn more about enhancing hybrid cloud performance and security with Cato SASE Cloud, sign up for a demo.