By using cloud-native applications, you can eliminate the need for on-site hardware almost completely. You save on space, power and resources of the business.
However, there have been some large-scale security breaches in recent years. The risk of security breaches on cloud-native applications is increasing gradually, and with highly sensitive information stored there, you need to take action.
How to secure your cloud-based apps
Cloud technology provides you with remote computing power, storage space and application software. Cloud-native applications are specifically built to function on the cloud ecosystem, and oftentimes the whole software development process (including testing, deployment and updating) takes place in a cloud environment.
Although these serverless cloud-native applications are being developed at an increasing pace, the security concerns for them are growing too. But there are ways to overcome these risks.
Here are the best ways to ensure there are no apertures in the security system of cloud-native applications.
1. Ensure security throughout the development process
In the development process, security is usually left to the end. The coders get the whole application ready to go into the running stage. Only after all the major development is done that the app is checked for security issues. This can lead to wasted time and effort.
If there is a security issue, your team will have to rush back to complete the development on time, and there might still be gaps left. Agile development models have no space for that. There is increasing pressure on delivering faster results.
Make sure your chief of security for applications is continuously working alongside the developing team to take care of security at each step. So, if there are issues with security at any part of the development cycle, you will know early and be able to fix it on time.
2. Provide your team with security tools
With the changing technology, you need security tools that can handle the dynamics of different projects. Vulnerabilities in function code, containers and misconfiguration of cloud infrastructure can all lead to cyber-attacks and security breaches.
One more issue is during the deployment process. When using containers in cloud-native applications, base images are fetched from local storage or some open collection, but creators often forget to check if there are any security issues with those images.
Your developing team needs to have suitable tools that can prevent the entrance of such vulnerable images in the CI/CD pipeline. Make sure you have updated tools, like Apiiro, that can handle the complexities of a cloud-native application.
3. Incorporate data masking
In data masking, data figures are retained for the organization, but a fake stream of data is listed instead of the real one to protect sensitive information. The data is protected in this way, but there is still a functioning alternative, such as in software testing.
After the data has been classified, your developers can build different masking algorithms to secure the original data. The structure will be reserved, but the values of the data will be altered. Data masking can be done in multiple ways, like changing the characters with other characters or just shuffling them.
4. Test security
Functional testing for applications is conducted regularly. Make sure security testing is also taking place regularly in all working environments. DevSecOps categorizes security as a shared responsibility that needs to be done throughout the development lifecycle and is not left for one point only.
5. Enforce perimeter security at the function and container levels
The system is divided into several, callable parts when you are dealing with serverless applications. Triggers coming from different sources get accepted by these components of the system. This makes the entire cloud-native applications vulnerable to security breaches.
Make sure your team is using APIs and building tools targeted for the cloud-native ecosystem. One more approach to fight the event-driven triggers is to enforce perimeter security at functional and container levels.
At the functional level, you look for functions that are stimulated by a different source than a normal one and also identify any abnormalities in the event triggers.
At the container level, security needs to be monitored at various levels like orchestrator control plane, physical hosts, pods and containers. For security at this level, you can isolate nodes, control and keep an eye on the traffic passing between containers, and put third-party authentication in place for the API server.
Wrapping up
Your team needs to be competitive, and there must be a shared responsibility of handling the security system. It shouldn’t be the burden of just one member or analyst.
Better yet, you can hire the services of a risk assessing firm, like Apiiro which is on the mission of proactive remediation of critical risks in cloud-native applications. You can get a risk assessment for your cloud-native application so that your developer can build on a solid security base.
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