If 61% of businesses have migrated their workloads to the cloud since 2020, there has to be some good reason for it! Modern-day businesses are inclined towards being as technologically relevant as possible to stay ahead of their competition. Secure cloud migration allows them to do that by fulfilling the demands for remote working and collaboration platforms. Further, clouds let businesses impact their infrastructure at scale, and thanks to cloud-native security solutions (like Sysdig), protection can grow in the same way.
In planning a migration to the cloud, an organization should not rush into the exercise by focusing only on the potential benefits while overlooking critical security considerations. According to Gartner, 45% of IT infrastructure and software spending will shift from traditional solutions to the cloud by 2024. Much of this newfound interest in public cloud hosting and services is part of the digital transformation efforts aimed at swiftly harnessing innovation at scale and uncovering new capabilities, even with budget constraints.
While public cloud service providers are more than capable of providing state-of-the-art security controls, enterprises must be very clear on what they need in terms of security before cloud migration. They should have a thorough understanding of their responsibilities concerning the configuration of such controls. Cloud migration opens organizations to cyber security threats such as unplanned or malicious data exposure, corruption, or loss that in most cases is linked to factors like poor configurations, risky data transfer mechanisms, or permissions that are not granted appropriately.
Let us identify some best practices, and associated concepts, for helping an organization prepare for a secure cloud migration.
Secure Cloud Migration Best Practices
The global cloud migration services market size was valued at USD 10.91 billion in 2023. The market is anticipated to grow from USD 12.54 billion in 2024 to USD 69.73 billion by 2032, exhibiting a CAGR of 23.9% during the forecast period.
Pre-Migration Risk Assessment
Migration from an on-premises environment to a Cloud Service Provider (CSP) is not without security risks. Unless identified, assessed, and mitigated, these risks can prevent the organization from reaping the full benefits of a secure cloud migration. It is, therefore, important to understand the risk tolerance that an organization can stand while planning this transition and analyze all attributes that require controls that minimize potential impacts.
A formal risk assessment conducted pre-migration process would involve information gathering and discussion in the technology, legal, and human capital issues domains, followed by collation of such information into a risk register. This may be greatly enhanced with appropriate technology solutions that allow for deeper insights into the existing environment of the current infrastructure and systems of the organization in order to identify further migration-related risks.
Areas of focus that would define this pre-migration risk assessment would be as follows:
Workload-Specific Risk Management
Organizations must evaluate criticality across different workloads and related risks. For instance, applications running customer data or business transactions are usually of higher value and should be more securely protected than those supporting business operations internally.
While data at rest and in transit must be secured, equally important is access management to this data, specifically in scenarios resulting in legal or regulatory implications. Guidelines for securing sensitive data, such as personally identifiable information (PII), in the public cloud—like ISO/IEC 27018:2019—should also be implemented with high caution.
Managing Performance-Related Risks
The reliability of the cloud environment being migrated to is one area that is critical to the assessment of security risks. A review of the history of outages of the CSP will help give the relevant reliability inputs. Besides, reviewing the terms and conditions around redundancy, continuity of services, and service credits helps enter data into the risk assessment. Since no cloud environment is completely free of risks, testing dependencies and contingency planning at the time of migration are necessary mitigation strategies.
Management of Knowledge Deficits
Migration can be difficult for IT staff who are used to on-premise systems. If it is not upscaled with proper upskilling and support, the possibility of security risks will always be very high since IT personnel might apply security controls wrongly.
This risk can be reduced through a detailed skills assessment, followed by a carefully crafted training program. Another aspect will be the involvement of experienced partners who can also help in mentoring IT staff during the migration. Formalize an OCM program in parallel to the training, and address job security and satisfaction issues.
A cloud security services company like Sysdig provides a comprehensive view of your infrastructure, aiding in knowledge transfer and training. By quickly identifying and diagnosing issues, Sysdig can help IT staff develop the skills needed to manage the cloud environment.
Adhering to CSP security regulations
Security responsibilities in a secure cloud migration are shared; they are not outsourced. It is a shared security model that CSPs emphasize right from the start. For instance, AWS separates securing the cloud from the infrastructure, which is a provider’s responsibility. Securing whatever goes into the cloud, such as data, configurations, and access management, is the customer’s responsibility.
On this point, ITIL 4 points out that any organization moving its operations to the cloud needs to understand the security the CSP offers in terms of guidance, attestations, and audit reports. It will be very helpful if you determine how you are going to secure your cloud usage by looking at the security features provided by the CSP. The roles are quite different according to the type of service, customization, integration needs, or regulatory requirements.
Such practices may just be copied in the cloud from on-premises security configurations, which may induce vulnerabilities. It is wiser to go in for CSP’s security recommendations, which have been constantly refined over time. CSPs offer best-in-class security insights, so following their insights on how to architect and deploy for security is invaluable.
Ensure Compliance with Industry-Specific Security Regulations
While designing a secure cloud migration, the identification and adherence to regulations and standards become very critical. The incidence of non-compliance could attract penalties, loss of operating licenses, or damage to customer trust. Therefore, choosing the right CSP is not solely a technical or financial issue but rather one that has to consider the ability of a provider to support an organization in ensuring compliance requirements on data privacy, location, and processing.
Here are some examples of commonly followed compliance regulations:
- GDPR: This EU regulation is a benchmark for data privacy. Organizations migrating to the cloud that handles the personal data of European citizens must choose a CSP that complies with GDPR requirements, ensuring secure data processing within European borders.
- HIPAA: This U.S. law mandates the proper use and safeguarding of individuals’ health information. Organizations handling the health data of U.S. citizens and migrating to the cloud must select a CSP with environments designed to meet HIPAA security standards.
- PCI-DSS: This standard governs the handling of payment card data. Organizations involved in card transactions must choose a CSP whose cloud environment is secured according to PCI-DSS requirements.
Conclusion
Knowing the concepts of secure cloud migration can help organizations planning to relocate their infrastructure and systems to the public cloud as part of their digital transformation strategy. For a successful cloud migration, enterprises must follow the recommended cloud migration security best practices. Doing so will help protect their systems and data, meet their objectives, and fulfill the expectations of stakeholders and customers. A poorly planned migration can introduce significant security risks, making it vital to integrate security considerations throughout every phase of the migration process—from initial planning to final deployment.
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