Hybrid cloud security: Balancing accessibility and encryption – The Financial Express

By Mohammed Imran KR

What Is a Hybrid Cloud?

A hybrid cloud is a way of using different types of cloud computing environments together, usually combining a public cloud and a private cloud or local infrastructure. This allows businesses to take advantage of the benefits of both public and private clouds by sharing data and applications between them.

Hybrid clouds allows businesses to choose where to place workloads and data based on compliance, audit, policy, or security requirements. While the various environments that make up a hybrid cloud remain unique and separate entities, migrating between them is facilitated by containers or encrypted application programming interfaces (APIs) that help transmit resources and workloads. This separateyet connectedarchitecture is what allows enterprises to divide their workloads between private cloud, which they directly control, and public cloud, offered by CSPs such as E2E Cloud, depending on their policies.

In the era of Generative AI, this is becoming even more important as a strategy, where companies are looking to divide their AI stack in a way that it can be deployed across both private and GPU cloud setups, to maximize the scalability of AI inference.

The many benefits of a hybrid cloud include:

Hybrid cloud allows businesses to flexibly allocate workloads and applications between public and private cloud environments depending on their needs. Generative AI workloads, for instance, can be split between private setup, during development, and public cloud during large scale model training.

By using the hybrid cloud, which mixes workloads between private and public clouds, businesses have the capability to scale their computing resources up or down as required without having to worry about infrastructure constraints.

Hybrid cloud allows businesses to save money by leveraging the cost-effectiveness of public cloud resources for non-sensitive data and workloads while still maintaining control over sensitive data and applications on private cloud or on-premises infrastructure.

Hybrid cloud enables businesses to implement stronger security measures and control over highly sensitive data, as they can keep it within their private cloud or on-premises infrastructure.

By using the newest technology and services provided by public cloud vendors while keeping sensitive data under their control, businesses can use hybrid cloud to innovate and create new products and services more rapidly and effectively.

While the hybrid cloud offers many benefits, it also presents certain security risks that businesses need to be aware of. These risks include:

Data Breaches: When sensitive data is shared between public and private cloud environments, it increases the risk of data breaches and unauthorized access.

Insider Threats: In a hybrid cloud setup, insider threats can pose a significant security risk. This is because employees with access to both public and private cloud environments may misuse their privileges and compromise the entire systems security.

Compliance Issues: When sensitive data is stored and processed across multiple cloud environments, ensuring compliance with industry and government regulations can take time and effort. It is critical to ensure that following a hybrid cloud setup doesnt violate the countrys IT laws, something that we guide our customers on regularly.

Interoperability Challenges: Cloud environments may have different security protocols and standards, making it difficult to assure consistent security across the hybrid cloud environment.

Network Vulnerabilities: Communication between public and private cloud environments can create vulnerabilities in the network, making it easier for cybercriminals to access sensitive data and applications.

Security in the Supply Chain: 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 important.

Securing a hybrid cloud environment requires a comprehensive and layered approach with multiple security measures. Some key steps businesses can take to secure their hybrid cloud environment include:

Identifying and Classifying Data: Determine which data is sensitive and requires additional security measures to protect it. Classify the data based on its level of sensitivity and ensure that appropriate security measures are in place to protect it.

Using Strong Authentication and Access Controls: It is important to use strong authentication protocols like Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and access controls like Role-based Access Control (RBAC) to make sure only authorized users can access sensitive data and applications.

Encrypting Data: It is crucial to encrypt sensitive data when it is in transit and at rest to prevent unauthorized access. Strong encryption algorithms should be used, and encryption keys should be securely stored. In the future, we will potentially see increasing use of Confidential Computing to protect data even when it is being processed.

Implementing Network Security: Use firewalls, VPNs, and other security measures to ensure secure communication between public and private cloud environments. Ensure that all communication between the two environments is encrypted and authenticated.

Monitoring and Logging Activities: Monitor and log all activities within the hybrid cloud environment to detect and respond to security incidents. Security Information and Event Management tools can be used to monitor logs to keep track of activities in all cloud environments and on-premises infrastructure.

Conducting Regular Vulnerability Assessments: Identify vulnerabilities within the hybrid cloud environment and address them promptly. It is important to conduct regular vulnerability assessments and penetration testing on the security architecture to find potential security vulnerabilities and fix them in advance.

Ensuring Compliance with Regulations: Ensure that the hybrid cloud environment complies with industry and government regulations. Establish security policies and procedures that are aligned with regulatory requirements, and ensure that all cloud providers involved in the hybrid cloud environment comply with these regulations.

Developing and Testing Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans: Develop and test disaster recovery and business continuity plans to ensure the hybrid cloud environment can recover from potential disasters or disruptions. Test the procedures regularly to ensure that they are practical and up-to-date.

Although the hybrid cloud offers many benefits, it also presents security challenges that must be addressed. However, organizations can mitigate these risks by implementing a comprehensive and planned hybrid cloud security strategy. By doing so, they can protect their hybrid cloud environments, reduce the likelihood of cyberattacks and ensure they adhere to IT laws and regulatory compliances.

The author is CTO, E2E Networks Ltd

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Hybrid cloud security: Balancing accessibility and encryption - The Financial Express

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