Jul 16, 2020
All links and images for this episode can be found on CISO
Series (https://cisoseries.com/defense-in-depth-securing-a-cloud-migration/)
You're migrating to the cloud. When did you develop your
security plan? Before, during, or after? How aware are you and the
board of the cloud's new security implications? Does your team even
know how to apply security controls to the cloud?
Check out
this post for the basis of our conversation on this week’s
episode which features me, David Spark (@dspark), producer of CISO Series,
co-host Allan
Alford (@allanalfordintx), and
sponsored guest Sandy Bird,
CTO and co-founder, Sonrai
Security.
Sandy was the co-founder and CTO of Q1 Labs, which was acquired
by IBM in 2011. At IBM, Sandy became the CTO for the global
security business and worked closely with research, development,
marketing, and sales to develop new and innovative solutions to
help the IBM Security business grow to ~$2B in annual revenue.
Thanks to this week's podcast sponsor, Sonrai
Security.

Identity and data access complexity are exploding in your
public cloud. 10,000+ pieces of compute, 1000s of roles, and a
dizzying array of interdependencies and inheritances. Sonrai
Security delivers an enterprise cloud security
platform that identifies and monitors every possible
relationship between identities and data that exists inside your
public cloud.
On this episode of Defense in Depth, you’ll
learn:
- You can't just migrate to public cloud and secure things like
you secure your on-premise servers and applications. You have to
think cloud-native in all security decisions.
- Cloud migrations intensify the focus between data and
identity.
- "Security as an afterthought" is never a good plan. Those who
succeed build security into the migration. Don't let IT broker a
deal to migrate to cloud and then bring in cyber after the
fact.
- In the cloud, knowing where your data is one step, securing the
data is another.
- There's a multitude of variances with data. There are the API
controls on data, who has access through those APIs, is the data
cloned or cached, and how are permissions being adjusted to that
data?
- Start by knowing who and what should access your data and build
your controls from there.
- The people side of securing cloud migration is critical. If
your staff is not properly trained, a single mistake can be
extremely expensive.
- Speeds in the cloud, especially if you've got a DevOps and
CI/CD approach, can make problems move at lightening speed. There's
a need for automation and to continuously monitor your controls and
coverage. Get ahead of problems.
- DevOps learned the fail fast technique, but also the ability to
recover quickly. If security wants to play as well, they have to
develop the same strategy and tools.