Cloud computing is a hot topic among security professionals, with many raving about the benefits of cloud-based applications. The benefits it offers are significant, from scalability to flexibility. However, many security concerns that come with this new technology are often ignored, malware and vulnerability management being one of them. This article will explore these two aspects of cloud security and how they can be addressed through detection solutions.
What is Vulnerability Management and How Does it Improve Cloud Security?
Security in the cloud is no different than it is on your local or personal computers. It’s about keeping your data safe, as well as identifying and preventing security threats that arise. You need to know what vulnerabilities are present in your environment and make sure nobody can exploit them.
Vulnerability management is one of the most important components of cybersecurity that you can implement on your cloud infrastructure. Vulnerability management identifies and corrects vulnerabilities in a cloud environment. It helps to minimize bugs that could be exploited by bad actors.
The concept of vulnerability management helps to improve cloud security for organizations by keeping a constant eye on security holes and deploying updates when appropriate. The best way to ensure that you’re prepared for whatever lies ahead is by building a model that accounts for all possible threats, and possible hacking attempts.
Common Cloud-Based Vulnerabilities
It is essential to understand common cloud-based vulnerabilities that need to be identified, addressed, and managed properly. Doing so will prevent any possible attacks on the cloud which is the uttermost priority of any good cloud vulnerability management system. The most common cloud-based vulnerabilities include:
- Misconfigurations
- Data Loss/Theft
- Non-Compliance
- Weak Access Management
- Vulnerable APIs
Features That Make Cloud Vulnerability Management Important
Here are some of the features that make cloud vulnerability management important:
1. Improved Security
Cloud vulnerability management is used to improve the security of the cloud platform, the apps that use it, and the data that is stored and delivered by them. It offers continuous monitoring of your apps and data, giving 24/7 protection and identifying flaws, which can then be instantly remedied.
2. Highly Preventative
Due to the 24/7 detection, assessment, and correction of defects, vulnerability management assists organizations in successfully preventing a variety of cyberattacks targeted at their sensitive data and applications.
3. Time-Saving
Improper monitoring of an application and the data stored in the cloud can lead to malicious attempts to access such data. Because of this, the organization may end up spending more time repairing the vulnerabilities themselves as a result of the exploitation of these flaws. This is where having strong cloud vulnerability management will help save a ton of your time and effort.
Steps In Cloud Vulnerability Management
Cloud vulnerability management is the ongoing monitoring of the cloud environment for the quick identification and correction of any vulnerabilities. It has five total steps:
1. Identification of Flaws:
This is the first action taken in a well-designed cloud-based vulnerability management system. It involves finding system flaws with the help of comprehensive vulnerability scanners that can detect a range of vulnerabilities.
2. Risk Assessment:
To determine the extent of the threat levels, the detected vulnerabilities are further assessed after correlation with the common vulnerability database. They are prioritized by evaluating the likelihood vs impact scale of each vulnerability. As a result, the business is more capable of determining which vulnerabilities require urgent attention and developing a comprehensive mitigation plan.
3. Remediation of Vulnerabilities:
Once the vulnerabilities have been analyzed based on the risk they pose, it is time to respond and repair each flaw discovered based on the data from the risk assessment.
4. Vulnerability Assessment Report:
A thorough vulnerability assessment report is produced by the cloud-based vulnerability scanner when the risk assessment is completed and the flaws are patched, mitigated, or left unfixed.
5. Re-scanning
After completing the three main procedures of identification, assessment, and remediation, a report is generated. The final step is to perform a re-scan to confirm that all vulnerabilities discovered during the first scan have been patched and the cloud platform is safe.
Best Cloud Vulnerability Management Practices
1. A Good VPN
A VPN or Virtual Private Network is a security tool that ensures your security online by encrypting your data and helps to stay anonymous online. Additionally, most of the VPN providers available on the market today like NordVPN or Surfshark VPN don’t collect your data, secure your internet connection, and unlock global content libraries and regionally-blocked sites. It ensures cloud security by creating a tunnel between the client and the cloud server. This ensures data protection and privacy, which eases the burden on the vulnerability management team.
2. Comprehensive Malware Detection
Using a comprehensive vulnerability scanner can significantly help with cloud-based vulnerability management. A scanner of this type is able to continuously scan for and detect even the most minor malware and flaws.
To ensure that all vulnerabilities are properly assessed, it also includes an extensive vulnerability database. A robust scanner is also capable of carrying out behind-the-login scans, malware checking, spotting logic problems, eliminating any false positives, and making sure there are no false negatives.
3. Regular pentests
The best method for cloud vulnerability management is to perform regular pentests. They go beyond vulnerability scanning by taking advantage of the flaws they have discovered to accurately determine the potential impact of any malware or cyberattack. These pentests help to point out any possible loopholes or vulnerabilities in the system and how they can be exploited. The cloud security team can then fix the vulnerabilities.
4. Vulnerability Prioritization:
Prioritizing vulnerabilities is a useful technique as it allows you to distinguish between the vulnerabilities that pose the greatest risk and require urgent mitigation. It helps to identify vulnerabilities that can simply be mitigated or left unfixed due to their low risk. CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) is a popular system for prioritizing vulnerabilities.
Conclusion
We need to rethink our existing paradigms and shift from a mainly reactive approach to a more proactive enforcement mindset, which starts with the necessity for each organization to be aware of its cloud security and its data, how it is stored and secured, who has access, and so on.
This article explained cloud vulnerability management in detail, the risks involved in not having a solid vulnerability management system in place, and the features that make it a valuable asset to a business’s cloud security practices. When a good cloud-based vulnerability scanner is deployed, it can deal with and find all of today’s and tomorrow’s vulnerabilities.
