The use of cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services (AWS), can be a transformational experience for businesses. The cloud can help organizations to modernize and operate with more agility, drive innovation, serve customers in new ways, respond to changing market conditions faster, and scale up or down quickly to meet changing business needs—all while reducing costs. Also, cloud platforms help support remote and hybrid work models, which is obviously critical in the current business environment.
All of the above reasons are factors for more organizations accelerating their adoption of cloud platforms. Acknowledging that the cloud is poised to play a central role in the future enterprise, International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts that “whole cloud” spending—including on cloud services, hardware and software, and managed services—will surpass $1.3 trillion worldwide by 2025.
As organizations widen their embrace of cloud platforms over the next few years, they will also need to make cloud security a high priority so that they can prevent data loss and maintain compliance. Even though cloud platforms are generally secure, cloud risks are rising as more cyber criminals shift their focus from the traditional network perimeter and set their sights on compromising people and the data, systems and resources they access.
Malicious actors are on the lookout for any evidence of cloud misconfigurations, mismanagement and other mistakes that will allow them to launch an attack and steal sensitive data—or worse. Information Protection solutions for secure access, data security and cloud security posture management can help organizations prevent this from happening.
How can an organization discover its AWS accounts and resources?
One thing about the cloud is that it can get pretty foggy. It’s challenging for IT and security teams to discover AWS accounts and resources when they lack visibility.
Proofpoint CASB can provide visibility on all software as a service (SaaS) and infrastructure as a services (IaaS) resources across AWS. And with better visualization of resource creation trends, the ability to drill down into discovered resources, your IT and security staff will have a much better handle on potential AWS security and compliance issues.
What is cloud security posture management (CSPM)?
Cloud security posture management, or CSPM for short, is a term that refers to the strategy and software used to manage cloud resources. IT teams use CSPM to identify cloud misconfigurations and other vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit. With a CSPM solution, organizations can be more confident that their cloud resources are configured properly, compliant with relevant laws and legal guidance, audited, well-organized and maintained, and secure.
Importantly, you can use cloud security posture management solution to help secure your use of popular cloud platforms, like AWS. For example, CSPM, as part of the Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker (CASB) solution, helps organizations discover configurations and settings that deviate from published baselines and could lead to unauthorized access to their AWS resources. It also recommends best practices to fix those misconfigurations that could create an AWS security risk.
What about fortifying Amazon Web Services security for remote users?
Proofpoint CASB can help enhance AWS security for remote users, as well. It combines people-centric controls with compromised cloud account detection, data loss prevention (DLP), and cloud and third-party apps governance. It’s adaptive access controls enable real-time AWS security measures based on risk, context and role. You can use Proofpoint CASB to block access from known threat actors, risky locations and networks automatically, apply risk-based controls to high-risk and high-privilege users, and more.
Proofpoint Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) enforcement is also an option for controlling remote user access to cloud resources like AWS. ZTNA is a people-centric alternative to a virtual private network (VPN). It secures remote access to any enterprise app, no matter where that app is located. And when you use Proofpoint CASB and ZTNA together, you can enable secure remote access for employees, contractors, partners and customers to apps hosted on AWS—further reducing AWS security risks.
What are solutions for protecting sensitive data in the cloud, including data in Amazon S3?
Many organizations use Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) to store and protect large and varied amounts of data, including from data lakes, mobile apps and cloud-native apps. As more data is stored in the cloud, the risk of data loss or compromise rises. It’s also challenging to keep track of exactly what is in the cloud and what might be particularly tempting for malicious actors.
Organizations can use Proofpoint CASB to identify and classify sensitive data in cloud storage repositories like Amazon S3. This people-centric solution help you monitor file activities for DLP violations. You can also use it to monitor your Amazon S3 buckets to identify instances of excessive sharing.
And what about insider threats that could lead to AWS security and compliance issues?
Good question—and we have an answer for that, too. You can manage insider threats that could create cloud security risks with Proofpoint Insider Threat Management (ITM). It’s part of the Proofpoint Information and Cloud Security Platform, and it can helps your organization defend against authorized users who might act with malice or negligence and cause costly, damaging data breaches.
Proofpoint ITM delivers visibility on user and data activity across instances of the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) web service for developers, as well as instances of the Amazon Workspaces desktop virtualization service. You get a complete view of endpoint-based activity and full context around user-driven incidents. Also, you can use Proofpoint ITM to visualize threat context around unique user groupings, helping your organization to better manage user risk that could lead to an Amazon Web Services security issue for your business.
Strengthen your AWS security with Proofpoint
In today’s dynamic threat landscape, many cyber criminals have become fully focused on compromising users and data in the cloud. That means your business must prioritize securing access to cloud platforms like AWS, especially as it relies more and more on these resources for everyday business.
Proofpoint CASB, Proofpoint ZTNA and Proofpoint ITM are just some solutions in the Proofpoint portfolio of security products that can help you achieve better security posture—and avoid AWS security and compliance issues that can stem from using cloud platforms.
To learn more about Proofpoint solutions that can provide AWS customers with people-centric security and compliance, download our solution brief.