Three solutions to ensure the security of cloud applications

Currently, cloud-based applications are widely used and are growing at an alarming rate. Because cloud-based applications can be accessed through the Internet, and anyone, anywhere can access. Therefore, the security of the application becomes particularly important. This is why companies that create and manage cloud-based applications must ensure that every layer of the application infrastructure that customers trust is secure.

Imagine if Google ’s Gmail was attacked by a hacker, what would happen if the hacker could read the content of the user ’s email? Not only will Google ’s reputation be affected, but Google ’s customers will soon start looking for alternatives to other emails, and customers and funds will inevitably be lost. If it turns out that if you check for security vulnerabilities, the Gmail security vulnerabilities used by the hacker can easily be blocked. How will the public react? Although this is a dramatic example, it happens every day. It is important that companies take appropriate measures to prevent security breaches as soon as possible, and do not wait until it is too late.

In this article, I will discuss three different strategies that companies can use to maximize the security of cloud-based applications and prevent terrible security vulnerabilities.

Identify and fix security holes

The first method to ensure the security of cloud-based applications is to discover and deal with all possible vulnerabilities as much as possible. Many techniques can be used to discover security vulnerabilities in applications, such as manual or automatic source code review, spot analysis, network scanning, fuzzing, fault injection, or symbol execution. However, to find software vulnerabilities in web applications, not all of these technologies are equally applicable. For cloud-based applications, such as operating systems or hypervisors, vulnerabilities in the application itself and lower-level vulnerabilities must be considered. Therefore, it is best to use penetration testing services to check the application and make a security report for all vulnerabilities found.

It must be remembered that even after a security review, there may still be a zero-day attack vulnerability. However, the review process can eliminate the most critical loopholes.

Avoid successful exploitation of security holes

To maximize the security of cloud applications, the second strategy is not to deal with newly discovered application vulnerabilities, but to prevent existing vulnerabilities from being exploited. There are a variety of techniques and tools that can prevent vulnerabilities from being successfully exploited, including:

Firewalls—Firewalls can be used to block access to certain DMZ border ports and successfully prevent attackers from accessing vulnerable applications via the network or DMZ.

Intrusion Detection (IDS) / Intrusion Prevention (IPS) System-By using IDS / IPS, enterprises can find known attack patterns and block attacks before they have a chance to reach the target application.

Web Application Firewall (WAF)-WAF can be used to find malicious patterns at the application layer. Vulnerabilities can be detected, such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting and path traversal. There are two types of WAF software solutions to choose from: blacklist or whitelist. Blacklist WAF can only intercept known malicious requests, while whitelist WAF intercepts all suspicious requests by default. When using a blacklist, it is easy to re-establish the request, so even if it does not appear in the blacklist, the request will never bypass the whitelist. Although it is safer to use a whitelist, it takes more time to complete the setup because all valid requests must be manually whitelisted. If an organization is willing to spend time building a WAF, the security of the enterprise may increase.

Content Distribution Network (CDN)-CDN uses the Domain Name System (DNS) to distribute content to multiple data centers across the Internet, making web pages load faster. When a user sends a DNS request, the CDN returns an IP that is closest to the user's location. This will not only make the web page load faster, but also protect the system from denial of service attacks. Usually, CDN can also open other protection mechanisms, such as WAF, email protection, monitoring uptime and performance, Google AnalyTIcs (analysis).

Authentication-The two-factor authentication mechanism should be used whenever possible. Logging into the cloud application using only the username / password combination is a huge loophole for the attacker, because user name / password and other information can be collected through social engineering attacks. In addition, attackers can also crack passwords by guessing or brute force. Single sign-on not only improves efficiency, but also ensures that all users can properly access cloud applications, while ensuring security.

Control losses caused by successful exploitation

To improve the security of cloud applications, the last solution also includes: the attacker bypasses the protection mechanism after finding a security vulnerability, and then uses the vulnerability to access the system to control the losses caused thereby. There are multiple CSP solutions, including:

Virtualization. When an application is compromised, its supporting infrastructure may suffer losses. Although security can be improved by controlling this loss, running applications in a virtualized environment means that each application must run an operating system – this is completely a waste of resource. This is why containers are becoming more and more popular. A container is a software component in which applications are separated from the rest of the system so that a fully mature virtualization layer is not required. Popular containers include Linux containers (LXC) or Docker.

Sandbox. Even if a hacker can access the back-end system, any attacks on the application will be restricted to the sandbox environment. Therefore, an attacker can only access the operating system by bypassing the sandbox. There are several different sandbox environments available, including LXC and Docker.

encryption. Some important information, such as social security numbers or credit card numbers, must be stored in a database and properly encrypted. If the application supports it, the enterprise should send the data to an encrypted cloud.

Log monitoring / security information and event monitoring (SIEM). When an attack occurs, it is best to have a logging system / SIEM to quickly determine the source of the attack, find the attacker behind and how to mitigate this problem.

Backup. In case of any problems, it is best to have a proper backup system. Because creating a working backup system is difficult – and it can take quite a while, many companies choose to outsource the backup process.

in conclusion

If you keep the data in the cloud, it will bring some new security challenges – fortunately, there are many ways to solve these problems. Compared to avoiding successful exploitation of vulnerabilities, identifying and fixing application vulnerabilities is equally important, and it is also critical to have appropriate defense mechanisms to prevent malicious attacks.

This article proposes many ways to protect cloud-based applications, but the setup requires time and effort. Because of these constraints, companies do not get the return on investment they want in time, so companies often overlook the importance of security. In practice, security is often important after the application infrastructure is destroyed. First, take appropriate steps to ensure the security of the application and prevent vulnerabilities—Second, formulating a plan for the measures taken when the vulnerability is exploited is critical to the success and security of the cloud application environment and the overall vitality of the organization .

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