Managing Application Security in the Cloud

Part 2/3 of Blog Series on Cloud Security Part 1

In the previous blog we discussed at length about the various challenges faced by applications

operating in the cloud and in this blog today, we will try to understand how to manage

application security in the cloud.

Several organizations today make use of in-house software applications to execute important

business processes, deliver advanced services to customers and to conduct business transactions

with various suppliers. In the wake of these important transactions being made, it is of prime

importance to secure these applications. In an increasingly dangerous threat landscape where

attackers are devising novel ways to infiltrate into company's secure IT infrastructure,

organizations need to adopt latest technological methods to assure application security. The

various steps you need to adopt in combating application breaches include

Assess your Risk Profile: The primary step is to assess how vulnerable your application is to

external as well as internal threats. Having a comprehensive security intelligence solution in

place that can continuously monitor enterprise environment and put vulnerabilities in context and

maintain a regular surveillance and assessment of your risk posture is strongly recommended.

Safeguard your Data: It is a well known fact that data security is an ongoing process and

maintaining a tab on flow of data, monitoring the resources accessing and modifying data,

enforcing strict policies regarding data access is very critical. Monitoring data activity provides

increased visibility into access of data, irrespective of the data located on big-data platforms, or

in the form of unstructured or structured databases. This step can ensure improvement of data

security in both on premise and cloud environments.

Track the User Access: Along with verifying user identities, you need to control access to data

based on what the users are accessing and also in what context are they accessing it. One of the

best solution that can help you in this regard is the adoption of federated identity management

solutions that can authenticate user access to Software-as-a Service (SaaS) applications and

cloud applications.

Integrate Application Security in SDLC: It is very important and in this increasingly

threatening attack landscape, it is imperative to incorporate application security into software

development life cycle. Attackers are exploiting the vulnerabilities in applications to download

malware onto user endpoints. Constant scanning of applications for vulnerabilities and making

them an integral part of development would go a long way in maintaining a secure environment.

Protect your applications against Fraud and Threats: In a cloud environment, integrated

threat protection continues to remain an important aspect and enterprises need to strive to prevent

applications from threats and frauds. Attackers are always looking out to infiltrate secure

networks and access important databases thereby resulting in fraud. In order to mitigate these

threats and prevent fraud, your enterprise needs to use a combination of security analytics, threat

intelligence and security products to effectively combat the attackers and secure data

In the next blog we will discuss how application security needs to be started at a code level and

various other ways to improve application security over the cloud.

DoubleHorn offers a complimentary Cloud assessment and helps you understand the level of

security Cloud offers to your IT infrastructure. Contact us to get started with the Cloud

assessment.