Users Guide to Cloud Security for Startups

Too small to get bothered about security?

“Focus” is the solution to startup success. With a short runway, inadequate resources, and dreadful competition, entrepreneurial teams must drive persistently to persuade convincing customer experiences. Startup cultures sack other distress as corporate bureaucracy, be it GAAP accounting, 401K plans, dress codes, or corner offices. Unsurprisingly, startups have typically delayed investments in cybersecurity as a corporate extravagance that can wait. After all, who would anyways bother to attack a startup?

Though a couple of years ago it seemed irrational for many organization founders to overlook cyber-security threats completely, since then there have been immense changes in the cybersecurity space. These changes have been threatening for every online business, be it big or small. Now startups almost use the same cloud infrastructure and networks that full-grown companies do and can rapidly accumulate huge, juicy caches of their user’s payment credentials and personal data. While crawling the web, malware infestations scale-up in scope to polish through the lengthy targets, they do not categorize between the TechCrunch50 and the Fortune50.

Rather the ever-rising cyber attacks like the DDoS extortion schemes exclusively target the smaller vulnerable enterprises. The wobbly cowboy culture of the startups, combined with a deficiency of security proficiency, fresh venture capital, and flimsy infrastructure make for easy pickings.

As a startup structure in the cloud, you probably have your own list of crucial business tasks. With its self-check-in installations and a wide range of services, the cloud today makes those everyday jobs way easier. Nonetheless, security can often be a second thought. Still, it’s vital to remember that the cloud is an expansion of your business network, irrespective of whether you know it exists or not. A contravene in security not only causes danger to your internal network but can also put customers’ data at risk.

The Security threats of Public Cloud

Though the public cloud comes with enormous financial benefits, it definitely has its own set of threats like any other infrastructure. In recent years there has been a significant increase in the occurrence of the attacks as well as the multiplicity of the malicious software used. Looking at the rise in cloud incidents related to web applications, beast force attacks, and vulnerability scanning it is extremely important to understand the different categories of threats affecting the cloud so that you can plan a detailed security plan to safeguard your environment from malicious attacks.

Shared Security Models

When we use the public cloud, it is extremely crucial to understand the shared security model that is present between the customer (you) and the service provider, for instance, say AWS. This will help you to avoid false assumptions about your service provider protecting you when ideally you are responsible for specific security functions. For instance, your service provider is accountable for all the foundational services, such as networking, storage, and database and computer power. When the network layer comes into the picture, your service provider is accountable for perimeter services, network segmentation, spoofing, and some DDOS, while the end-users are accountable for reporting, network threat detection, and any incident response. Also at the host level, the end-user is responsible for log analysis, access management, security monitoring, configuration hardening, and patch management. You are solely responsible for the application components of your site.

Having a clear picture of your roles and the roles of your cloud provider will assist you in taking the right decisions concerning your cloud infrastructure. It will also make sure that once executed, your cyber-security strategy will protect your data cost-effectively and efficiently from all cloud threats.

The best practices in Cloud Security

1. Build an Access Management Policy– Firstly, identify all your assets. Then classify the roles and responsibilities needed to access those assets. Always switch to centralized authentications if possible. Begin with a privilege model to execute authentication.
2.  Implement a Patch Management Approach– Think- over creating a checklist to execute the below procedures:
   1. Keep a stock of your assets
   2. Establish a plan for standardization.
   3. Explore the possible vulnerabilities that can affect you. Categorize the risks based on their vulnerability and likelihood.
   4. Whenever possible, test patches before their release.
   5. Design a regular schedule for patching and do not overlook the third-party products that may need a manual update.
3. Logging– Logs have now become a dominant security tool. We can use the log information to supervise any malicious activity, and for forensic investigation. The key to making efficient logs is the 24/7 monitoring it does to identify any abnormal behavior.
4. Construct Security Toolkit– It is essential to treat the cloud as an enterprise network. You have to execute an exclusive guarding strategy that would include all the set of responsibilities in the pile. Make use of IP tables, antivirus, web application firewalls, log management, encryption, and intrusion detection. Research your security options and ensure you have the correct solution for your business.
5.  Be Updated– You have to be updated about all the possible vulnerabilities in your environment. 
6. Tune well with your service provider– Lastly, understand the security offerings provided by your security provider and the responsibilities owned by you. Ensure that your security strategy is implemented efficiently and effectively through frequent testing.

Conclusion

In contrast to other technical issues, cyber-security is a difficult one to resolve. But that doesn’t prevent you from making it a core proficiency of your business. As much as your startup depends upon online assets, your success is completely dependent upon your data security.  WeSecureApp aims to provide all cutting-edge features in the cloud security that you need.

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