By Kumarpal Sheth, Managing Director, Wissen Technology
Gartner estimates that worldwide IT spending will hit a total of USD 5 trillion in 2024. Despite uncertainties and economic slowdowns reported widely, there is no stopping businesses from pursuing their digital ambitions this year as well. While AI is making further inroads, enterprises cannot simply ignore the need to ensure that they have a solid foundation to work behind the scenes to support AI innovations. This foundation is in many ways tied to their ability to build their digital ecosystem on the cloud.
Cloud is at the Heart
Studies have shown that 1 out of 5 organizations have 75% of their IT workloads running on the cloud. Businesses in different sectors are pushing towards a cloud-first approach and they are doing so by creating cloud-native applications for all their core customer and internal operations. But the pivot to cloud-native is not without its fair share of concerns.
Escalating security concerns
In just 2023, a staggering 80% of global data breaches reported happened on data stored in the cloud. This has put tremendous pressure on businesses when they design and deploy cloud-native applications. The growth of 5G, IoT, and other technologies have expanded traditional boundaries where the cloud played a facilitator role. In other words, the attack surface for threats has expanded significantly corresponding to the digital boom.
The race is now on for businesses to move into new paradigms for cloud security. They need to take inspiration from development paradigms that have been streamlined with DevOps and cloud-friendly architecture. One of the forerunners on this front is the adoption of Zero Trust Principles for cloud-native applications.
What are zero trust principles?
In simple terms, it implies the elimination of implicit trust in any process. Nobody or no workflow is immune from security checks or measures. Every entity is treated as a potential threat and monitored cautiously. From an application development perspective, enterprises can leverage the zero-trust model to build software that has security as a fundamental building block rather than an add-on supplied by a 3rd party tool or framework.
Right from design and into deployment and continuous operation, security checks are integrated into the application. There is no need for security teams to deploy new security tools and audits every time a change is initiated in the application. The change to the application will be designed so that it is vetted for security before being rolled out into deployment.
Why is zero trust beneficial?
A major advantage of zero-trust cloud-native application development is that it simplifies security management. It becomes a development philosophy rather than an external management overhead. Attackers will have a lesser surface on the cloud to attack because every application will be engineered to handle their own security needs. This also helps in reducing the impact of any attack by containing breaches and easy recovery through backup strategies.
Building cloud-native applications with zero-trust principles
The bare necessity of the zero-trust security model is to eliminate implicit trust for any entity as mentioned earlier. Enterprises can adopt a zero-trust framework for their cloud-native applications by focusing on 3 major areas:
Verify identity
From developers and DevOps personnel to devices used to access cloud infrastructure, it is critical to enforce identity verification mechanisms. The traditional approach of simple login using a username and password is no longer the accepted norm in this regard. Instead, enterprises must strive towards using multi-factor authentication techniques to verify the authenticity of any entity that requests access to cloud infrastructure. This also helps in logging information about who had access to what. This information is extremely useful when running any emergency remedial measures to limit damages in the event of a breach or security lapse.
Control access privileges
If a user or device or even an application or its sub-services are in the organisation’s network, it should not be considered as a safe entity. They should not be allowed automatic access to any computational or storage resource residing on the cloud. Very clear instructions and guidelines should be established for developers, business users, and other teams within the organization for the usage of cloud resources. Permissions based on user role, job functions, etc. need to be enforced to prevent any potential lapses. As a best practice, critical resources on the cloud should be provisioned to only a very minimal number of personnel with strict continuous monitoring of their usage patterns.
Monitor transactional behaviour
The other two areas focus more or less on securing entities on the network with the right controls. However, a zero-trust model requires not just controls on the components but also their outcomes. In other words, transactional events happening within cloud-native applications must be protected from vulnerabilities. Every content or output produced in the application needs to be verified before they are exchanged with other systems. APIs that facilitate the exchange must also be fortified with guardrails and security best practices.
How can Wissen help you with Zero Trust?
Zero-trust model is a security architecture that has far-reaching benefits and strategic importance for modern cloud-native business applications. The necessity to protect digital assets on the cloud from threats is imperative given the massive trust your customers have in your business. Any letdowns will not just ruin reputations but can also invite regulatory penalties and scrutiny. Going into a zero-trust architecture for your cloud-native applications requires strategic guidance and implementation expertise.