How can you save money while securing your cloud?

⛔️ I strongly disagree with the common belief that "public clouds are cheaper but less secure." ↳ Leading public cloud providers frequently set the gold standard in cybersecurity. ↳ They often surpass the capabilities of traditional on-premises solutions. ↳ The notion that public cloud cost-effectiveness and accessibility compromise security is a misconception. In reality, these providers offer robust, customizable security frameworks.

False. Public cloud vendors adhere to top-tier security benchmarks across various sectors (PCI-DSS for card transactions, HIPAA for medical data, etc.) and implement exceptionally robust physical security measures, comparable to military standards. This is necessitated by the diverse multitude of clients that public cloud providers serve. Employing cloud-native solutions and automation can result in cost savings when utilizing Public Cloud providers.

Consider these strategies: - Choose security solutions that strike the right balance between effectiveness and cost. - Adopt the least privilege principle to limit access to only essential functions for each user or system. - Periodically review and update permissions to align with business needs, reducing the risk of unauthorized access. - Implement continuous monitoring and conduct regular security audits to swiftly identify vulnerabilities and threats. - Enhance your team's awareness and response capabilities by investing in cybersecurity training. - Foster a security-conscious culture within your organization to proactively prevent security incidents and avoid additional costs.

Private Clouds aren't more secure. This is an obsolete perspective. Economies of scale, massive global operations, data points, intelligent heuristics, platform protection mechanisms and engineering investments by Public Cloud Service Providers that can't be matched by a customer give rise to the most secure solutions. Security budget for the company in the Private Cloud model would be larger, with expert staff needed to implement security on an ongoing basis contrary to a scenario when a company adopts Public Cloud as the platform of choice and relies on integrated white-glove security solutions directly from CSPs. In many cases these are just a switch of a button, are enabled by default, are free of charge, and can be easily operated.

•Cloud Native tools simplify security management, making it straightforward for businesses of all sizes. •These tools seamlessly combine various security services, providing comprehensive protection. •Using built-in tools saves money by reducing the need for expensive third-party solutions. •Businesses can keep an eye on activities as they happen and respond quickly to security issues. •Cloud-native tools also help maintain compliance with industry rules and standards. •Focusing on SRE which will help businesses to achieve the SLA using SLI and SLOs to meet security compliances.

Cloud-native security tools offer a convenient and cost-effective approach to enhance posture of your cloud environment. ↳ They eliminate the need for third-party tool, ↳ They usually have pay per use model, ↳ They integrate seamlessly into the cloud provider's architecture, simplifying management. ↳ They often align with industry compliance standards, providing an added layer of assurance. However, while efficient and cost-effective, these tools may lack the flexibility and advanced features needed for specialized security requirements. The risk of vendor lock-in must also be considered.

Certainly! Optimizing cloud resources is all about making the most out of your cloud infrastructure while managing costs effectively. It means choosing the right types of servers and storage for your needs, automatically adjusting resources based on demand, taking advantage of cost-effective reserved instances, keeping an eye on your usage, using managed services when possible, and regularly reviewing and adjusting your setup to match your current requirements. These practices help ensure that you're using your resources wisely, saving money, and keeping your applications running smoothly.

When the workload can be predicted in advance, an alternative approach to decreasing cloud expenses is reserving computing capacity. This strategy can lead to savings of up to 70% compared to on-demand costs.

Leveraging PaaS, CSP native solutions and modern event-driven computing instead of lower-level infrastructure should in many (if not most) cases result in significant cost savings. There are additional strategies that can optimize overall Cloud cost like volume discounts and reduced service pricing for non-production workloads. Specialty is auctions on unused capacity (ephemeral resources). In this case, unused computing capacity is released in the pool but computing resources can be terminated at any point in time and the capacity is taken back, if the customer demand rises. Depending on the architecture and use case, leveraging a pool of unused capacity can greatly reduce overall cost while improving performance.

Effective working model would be to implement Cloud Center of Excellence/Cloud Platform Engineering, central Cloud Team overseeing and implementing enterprise-level Cloud Security Posture, while acting as ambassador of Cloud Security for different teams in the organization. Mutual partnership and understanding of responsibilities between different teams is required. Good Platform Engineering is essential for achieving a mature level of Cloud Security, Compliance and removing as much heavy burden from the staff as possible, thus limiting the human risk factor. For the most part, Cloud Security should be already "baked-in" by Platform Engineering (Landing Zone) to the most possible extent.

One way to secure your Application running in a Cloud is to obscure the fact that it's IN a Cloud! Using an ADC running somewhere outside of your Cloud (IE> Data Center, CoLo, etc.), set up the Virtual IP / SLB and have the ADC use Tunnels (IE> IPIP, VXLAN, etc.) to tunnel into the Cloud down to the Application VMs/Container/Pods/etc. Hackers will only see the IP Address of the ADC, which will tell them it's NOT on a Public Cloud, when in fact, the guts of the Application is in fact running in a Public Cloud!

Data governance is a big aspect of securing data stored in the cloud. - Who has access to what? - MFA - Privileges - Data confidentiality, sensitivity and privacy - Auditing and logging - who accessed what? These are critical pieces for securing data storage on the cloud.