How to Secure a Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure

What is Hybrid Cloud Strategy?

Hybrid clouds offer the best of both worlds — the data centers’ customization and flexibility combined with the public and private cloud environments. This adaptability is why they’re so appealing to enterprise companies. By 2023, 90% of organizations will use hybrid clouds, says Gartner.

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

Increased Complexity, Decreased Visibility

Today, companies’ IT environments are becoming increasingly complex as public clouds become available, which makes managing and securing these environments even more challenging. Organizations lose the possibility of tracking user usage without implementing measures to ensure that the service is a reliable source. A hybrid environment naturally introduces more complexity because the window is more likely to lock, and the security maintenance is more complex.

The hybrid cloud has benefits that can be achieved with private and public clouds, so hybrid cloud technology has an advantage. Two key advantages are apparent: flexibility and cost reduction with centralized management and consistent policies.

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 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 and protect sensitive data, lower security risks, and reduce security vulnerabilities.

Hybrid cloud environments often include products and software from multiple vendors in a complicated ecosystem. It’s essential to know how your vendors test and manage their software and products. 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 Model Advantage

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. 

Hybrid Cloud Security Challenges

Hybrid cloud computing is an approach to building and managing cloud services that combine private and public cloud resources. A hybrid cloud security architecture allows organizations to deploy workloads across multiple providers’ infrastructures, including public and private multi-cloud environments. In addition, hybrid cloud architectures allow users to move workloads between providers without managing physical servers or virtual machines.

Security professionals will adopt a hybrid cloud security strategy spanning their private network security strategies from the premise infrastructure to cloud platforms.

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 are severe shortages in cybersecurity expertise for hybrid cloud environments. Despite the fact 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.Edu:

• 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.