The Importance of Cloud Security and Compliance

Uncover the common cloud compliance challenges and learn how to address cloud security and compliance requirements Meeting regulatory compliance in the cloud ensures that you can leverage the advantages of cloud computing, including cost-effectiveness, data backup and recovery, and scalability, all while upholding robust security measures. However, several other important factors prompt organizations to ensure cloud security and compliance. First, the hot trend for migrating workloads to hybrid and multi-cloud environments raises demand for cloud compliance. In 2023, 27% of organizations reported that more than half (60%) of their workloads were in the cloud. More and more businesses operate in hybrid and multi-cloud environments moving their workloads to more than one cloud. More than three-quarters (79%) of organizations have more than one cloud provider. The rising demand provoked an explosion in the cloud infrastructure market with the average number of cloud infrastructure providers (IaaS and PaaS) increasing by 35% over two years (from 1.68 to 2.26). Each additional cloud provider may demand new security controls and data protection requirements to understand and implement. Second, there is a dramatic increase in sensitive data reported in the cloud that demands appropriate security and protection measures. Three-quarters of respondents report that 40% or more of their data in the cloud is sensitive, which represents almost a half-increase (49%) compared to 2021. This increase, combined with the trend for hybrid and multi-cloud environments serves as another factor leading to the rising demand for cloud data security and regulatory compliance. Finally, cloud compliance helps reduce data breach costs. Insufficient compliance, along with the security systems’ complexity, and a shortage of security skills, are among the three main factors that increase data breach costs, according to IBM. Regulatory compliance helps reduce data breach costs by establishing proactive measures to prevent and detect breaches, mitigating their impact. Compliance regulations such as GLBA and HIPAA mandate robust security controls and incident response protocols, ensuring organizations are better equipped to prevent breaches or limit their scope. This proactive approach reduces the likelihood of breaches occurring and minimizes their impact. Additionally, compliance with regulatory requirements may result in reduced fines and penalties in the event of a breach, further mitigating financial losses. With more data moving to the cloud, businesses must understand their own role and responsibility for keeping that data safe, including achieving and maintaining compliance with applicable requirements. This is essential for not only building customer trust but also for avoiding costly data breaches and reputational damages. Let’s dive deeper into the topic of cloud security and compliance and learn how you can address cloud security and compliance requirements.

What is cloud regulatory compliance?

Cloud compliance refers to adhering to legal and industry-specific regulations and standards as well as local, national, and international laws when storing, processing, and managing data in cloud computing environments. These regulations aim to safeguard sensitive information, guarantee data privacy, and ensure a secure environment for data transmission and storage. To use the cloud compliantly, organizations should ensure their cloud-based workloads and data are properly protected from internal and external threats, and services are properly configured to follow the regulatory requirements specific to the industry or environment in which the organization operates. Some of the common data security and privacy regulations include:

• Industry standards such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS),
• Federal laws such as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
• Privacy Laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
• Standards such as Services Organization Controls (SOC) or ISO/IEC (International Organization for Standardization (ISO)/International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), ISO/IEC 27001.

Compliance often involves implementing specific security measures such as data encryption, access controls, audit trails, and regular compliance assessments to ensure that cloud services meet regulatory requirements.

Cloud compliance challenges

2023 Cloud Security Report distinguished the following top challenges faced by organizations in maintaining cloud compliance:

• lack of staff expertise and knowledge (55%);
• continuously staying in compliance as cloud environments change (43%);
• performing regular audit/risk assessments (37%);
• staying up to date about new/changing compliance and regulatory requirements (35%);

Organizations struggle to find qualified personnel who can effectively manage and ensure compliance in cloud (and multi-cloud) environments. This issue has been the top challenge for several years as using several cloud environments increases an attack surface and potential for operational errors when implementing controls for securing multiple platforms. Furthermore, compliance requirements evolve, and staying informed of all innovations is often burdensome for a company staff who needs to regularly monitor updates and changes to regulations, standards, and guidelines relevant to cloud computing and data management. Increased cloud usage is widely associated with the fast-paced adoption of cloud applications which opens the door to shadow IT when employees use cloud technology without explicit approval. This term may sound scary, but in practice shadow IT could be as simple as purchasing additional cloud storage without proper approval. Left unchecked, shadow IT can lead to lost data, an increased attack surface, and non-compliance. Finally, organizations often hardly understand the boundaries between their own and the provider’s responsibility for security and compliance within the cloud. Using well-known cloud service providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, or GCP often gives companies a false sense of data security and misunderstanding of who does what. This, in turn, often leads to compliance gaps. Whether you want to ensure HIPAA compliance in the AWS cloud or conduct a SOC 2 audit of your cloud-based workloads, you need to clearly understand where is your share of responsibility in the cloud and maintain your compliance obligations properly. Overall, to overcome these challenges, organizations should invest in staff training and certifications, develop effective compliance monitoring processes, and stay up-to-date on regulatory changes and emerging threats in the cloud environment.

Addressing cloud security and compliance requirements

Identify data and regulations

The initial stage in attaining cloud compliance involves identifying the regulations and industry standards that your organization must adhere to. If you are reading this article, you probably know the relevant legal frameworks and regulations applicable to your industry and geographic location. For example, if you are a healthcare startup that operates in California and serves customers from the US, Canada, and Europe, your compliance requirements would most likely include HIPAA, PIPEDA, CCPA, and GDPR. In addition, many cloud service providers undergo audits and obtain certifications to demonstrate compliance with various regulations, which can help you align with industry standards on your side. Finally, evaluate the types of data your organization handles and determine the specific compliance requirements associated with that data. Different regulations may apply depending on the sensitivity and nature of the data.

Understand responsibility

Cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, or GCP outline specific cloud usage responsibilities. And the worst is to think that data privacy and security are the cloud provider’s responsibility. Cloud providers offer physical security, host infrastructure, network, and application-level controls of the solution. However, the responsibility for access controls and other security configurations, such as back-ups, and vulnerability management often lies with the customer. Even though SaaS companies do their best to ensure their part of cloud security, they can’t guarantee security when it comes to user-managed controls. They are also powerless when customer data leaves the cloud to interact with other systems or when the user’s cloud credentials get compromised.

Understand the unique requirements of your cloud environment

In addition to the shared responsibility in the cloud, there are also cloud service types and deployment models that affect who handles security requirements. The most common cloud services are Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). The common deployment models are public, private, and hybrid. In addition, the division of responsibilities varies in private and hybrid clouds. For instance, in a PaaS scenario, administrators oversee applications, while the cloud service provider manages physical servers, network infrastructure, hypervisor, and operating systems. Responsibility for hardware asset inventory and control differs between hybrid and public cloud environments. Understanding the distinct risks and requirements of your cloud environment is crucial for adhering to security and compliance standards effectively.

Maintain proper configurations

Misconfiguration is among the common cloud security and compliance risks. Cloud providers offer multiple security solutions that help ensure data integrity and meet compliance obligations. However, it is always the customer who needs to configure these solutions properly as required by specific regulations. Some of the common cloud compliance configurations include

• Access controls. Maintaining access controls in the cloud is crucial for data security. Regular access reviews, role-based access control, multi-factor authentication, and robust monitoring are key practices. Access should be aligned with job roles, and unnecessary permissions promptly removed. Multi-factor authentication adds an extra layer of security. Monitoring helps detect suspicious activities. By implementing these measures, organizations can mitigate the risk of unauthorized access and data breaches.
• Encryption. The majority (60%) of businesses are still failing to encrypt half of their cloud-based sensitive data. Proper encryption in the cloud is vital for regulatory compliance, ensuring that sensitive data remains protected from unauthorized access. Regulatory and industry requirements such as GLBA, GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS mandate the use of encryption to safeguard data privacy and integrity. Encrypting data at rest and in transit helps organizations meet these requirements, mitigating the risk of data exposure.
• Audit logs. Audit logs in the cloud provide users with a detailed record of user activities and system events. They serve as a valuable tool for monitoring and tracking access to sensitive data, ensuring accountability, and detecting any unauthorized or suspicious activities. Regulatory standards require organizations to maintain comprehensive audit trails to demonstrate compliance and facilitate investigations in the event of security incidents or breaches.
• Vulnerability management. Vulnerability management ensures that organizations identify, assess, and remediate security weaknesses in their cloud environments. By regularly scanning for vulnerabilities, organizations can proactively address vulnerabilities and prevent their exploit. Compliance regulations and certifications such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, and ISO 27001 require robust vulnerability management practices to address potential threats and maintain the security of cloud systems.

Your cloud provider may offer encryption services, but remember that it’s still the business’s responsibility to protect data while it’s being moved and stored.

Cloud security providers and their compliance offerings

The major cloud security providers, such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform provide and continuously extend their compliance offerings. They generally support multiple compliance laws and regulations including HIPAA, CCPA, GLBA, GDPR, etc. They also have SOC 2 audit reports and ISO 27001 certifications. The extensive list of compliance offerings represents these cloud service providers as reliable partners who care about the quality of cloud services and data protection. The cloud providers’ offerings increase their customers’ chances for compliance, except for several things:

• First, all of these cloud service providers have a list of compliant services; some services cannot be used in compliance with one regulation or another.
• Second, none of the services are compliant out of the box, which means they need proper customer configurations to be considered compliant;
• Third, SOC 2, ISO 27001, or any other certification of your cloud service provider does not extend to your environment or controls managed by you.

Even though cloud service providers offer various services to enhance cloud compliance, they don’t cover all customer-managed controls. Thus, customers bear their share of the responsibility to configure services properly.

How Planet 9 can help maintain cloud compliance?

Ensuring compliance in rapidly evolving cloud environments is a time- and resource-intensive process. Organizations often struggle to find qualified personnel who can effectively manage and ensure cloud compliance; keep up to date with regulatory updates relevant to cloud computing and data management; and understand boundaries between their own and the provider’s responsibility for security and compliance within the cloud. To address these challenges and ensure a secure, compliant cloud environment, Planet 9 offers:

• Experienced professionals with extensive expertise in securing cloud services across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS;
• Continuous monitoring of regulatory changes and updates relevant to cloud computing and data management, ensuring ongoing compliance;
• Thorough management of cloud obligations based on your organization's specific responsibilities in the cloud;
• Assessment of your cloud management accounts and infrastructure and providing recommendations for addressing identified security and compliance gaps.

Depending on the client’s internal resources, expertise, and availability, Planet 9 can perform all the remediation work, position the client to execute remediation on its own or supplement the client’s team. Contact Planet 9 to learn more about cloud compliance.