How to Secure a Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure

What is Hybrid Cloud infrastructure?

Hybrid cloud infrastructure offers the best of both worlds —the data centers’ customization and flexibility combined with the public and private cloud environments, allowing both systems to work together seamlessly to support an organization’s business processes and IT goals. Typically, it involves integrating public cloud services (like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, or IBM Cloud) with private cloud or on-premises equipment. This adaptability is why they’re so appealing to enterprise companies. According to Edgedelta, 80% of companies use a hybrid cloud approach.

In this article, we’ll discuss the benefits of a hybrid cloud environment, security challenges for hybrid cloud environments, hybrid cloud governance, and more. 

When to Choose Hybrid Cloud

Hybrid cloud infrastructure is particularly beneficial in several scenarios:

1. Regulatory Compliance: For organizations dealing with strict data regulations, a hybrid cloud platform allows for the storage of sensitive data on-premises while leveraging cloud resources for other operations.
2. DevOps and Testing: Hybrid environments provide excellent sandboxes for testing new applications or updates without affecting production systems.
3. Gradual Cloud Migration: A hybrid cloud strategy offers a stepping-stone approach for businesses looking to move to the cloud incrementally.

The Beauty of Hybrid Cloud Model

One advantage of cloud computing that helps organizations in their cloud journey is portability, which extends the experience across the cloud, one application or workload at one time.

Application portability in a secured strategy allows for minimal disruption of current services while protecting data at rest and in transit. Cloud-based applications could span across several multi-cloud providers along with existing on-premise networks. Hybrid and multi-cloud environments give organizations options when deploying new business applications. 

Flexibility and Scalability 

One of the primary advantages of hybrid cloud infrastructure is its unparalleled flexibility. Organizations can keep sensitive data or legacy applications on-premises while leveraging the public cloud environment for less critical workloads or to handle increased demand. This “cloudbursting” capability allows businesses to scale resources up or down as needed without over-provisioning their on-premises infrastructure.

Cost-Effectiveness 

Hybrid cloud solutions offer significant cost savings opportunities. By utilizing public cloud resources for specific tasks, businesses can reduce the need for expensive on-premises hardware. Plus, the pay-as-you-go model of many cloud services means you only pay for what you use, potentially leading to substantial savings.

Investment Protection 

Many organizations have invested heavily in on-premises infrastructure and legacy applications. A hybrid cloud allows them to continue leveraging these investments while gradually modernizing their IT environment. This approach provides a smooth transition path to more cloud-based operations without disrupting current business processes.

Enhanced Disaster Recovery 

Hybrid cloud infrastructure excels in providing robust disaster recovery solutions. Organizations can ensure quick data retrieval and application recovery in a disaster without needing a costly secondary physical site by using public cloud storage for off-site backups.

Complex Hybrid Cloud Environments

Hybrid cloud environments are easier to observe and manage based on open technologies. They are typically infrastructure and tool-agnostic, making hybrid cloud storage, data collection, and analysis easier. Businesses can choose from various security monitoring and remediation tools targeting different requirements. IT teams can build a customized security strategy to protect sensitive data, lower security risks, and reduce vulnerabilities.

Hybrid cloud environments often include products and software from multiple vendors in a complicated ecosystem. Knowing how your vendors test and manage their software and products is essential. Moreover, you also need to understand when and how your vendors have inspected source code, how and which implementation guidelines they follow, and how and when vendors can provide updates and patches.

Hybrid Cloud Security Challenges

While hybrid cloud computing offers numerous benefits, it’s not without challenges. Combining private and public cloud resources comes with increased complexity, potential latency issues, and the need for specialized skills to manage hybrid environments, which are factors to consider. A hybrid cloud security architecture also ensures consistent security across both on-premises and cloud-based systems, which requires careful planning and execution.

Hybrid Cloud Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) 

The availability of data by an enterprise should be assessed annually as an essential factor in maintaining data security and GRC. Organizations must also regularly verify and authorize individual access to meet compliance mandates. This strategy helps organizations protect the security and privacy of data from potential threats.

Data Encryption

The encryption method protects hybrid cloud systems. Data stored in rest, namely files on hard drives, is encrypted with a Full Disk Detonation Encryptor. Likewise, full hardware encryption is possible using the Trustful platform module TPM. It locks the computer until unauthorized users log in. The transport layer security is used to secure the transmission of information on a network.

Talent Shortages

There is a severe shortage of cybersecurity expertise in hybrid cloud environments. Although the cloud has become so important in many organizations, it is difficult to find and hire security professionals with knowledge of cloud security. This cloud-based cybersecurity knowledge gap could expose enterprises to risks. 

People seeking a career in cloud administration should gain the skills, certifications, and expertise necessary for employment by exploring cloud administration education paths, like the following Cloud Administration program offered at CIAT:

• Certificate in Cloud Administration
• Applied Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Information Systems – Cloud Concentration

Knowledge for Today and in the Future

Hybrid cloud and platform engineering are exciting new fields and incredibly valuable to organizations moving towards public and private clouds. Security concerns, data protection, and enabling security controls supporting the hybrid cloud security architecture are top-of-mind with every CEO, CIO, and CISO today.

Students looking for a career with unlimited growth should consider cybersecurity engineer and cloud administrator career paths. The need for a qualified engineer could not be more significant. The cyber threat landscape continues to grow, and entry-level and specialized positions in cybersecurity are in great demand.