Every Organization that Uses the Cloud Has a Hybrid, Multi-Cloud Envir

Every Organization that Uses the Cloud Has a Hybrid, Multi-Cloud Environment

Clouds may seem isolated, but in reality they are just a component part of the extended IT infrastructure. Treating them as distinct entities only creates headaches and risk.

Even organizations that have standardized on a single cloud technology stack have a hybrid, multi-cloud environment. The cloud provider still needs to interact with endpoints, and has its own techniques for managing those endpoints at scale. The cloud software that manages those endpoints is separate from the software that manages the server side of the environment. However, few organizations take full advantage of the tools at their disposal, and attempt to manage endpoints and user identities with traditional on-premises tools.

Security depends on the ability to determine what endpoint is in the user’s hand and manage it in the same way as the cloud. That’s why organizations invest in mobile device management (MDM) solutions — IT needs the ability to configure any settings on endpoint devices with the same ease that they manage cloud resources. However, a traditional MDM solution separates the management of endpoint devices from the management of cloud servers. It works for the most part but results in an unnecessarily complex environment that leaves security gaps.

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A Disconnected Approach Creates Risks

The SANS 2021 Cloud Security Survey sheds light on some of the challenges organizations still face with their cloud security programs. The survey found that most security controls and related services are still deployed and managed in-house. While there has been some growth in the use of cloud-based and hybrid models, the percentages remain small across the board.

For example, 72 percent of organizations surveyed are using identity and access management (IAM) to protect their cloud environments, but more than half of those are still managing it internally. Most synchronize in-house directories to cloud directory services. Less than 20 percent are using cloud-based IAM, and only 28 percent are taking a hybrid approach. Less than 58 percent are using the cloud provider’s APIs.

Traditional on-premises IAM solutions weren’t designed to track cloud permissions. In the cloud, every resource has a unique identity and its own entitlements. Traditional IAM tools don’t provide the visibility IT needs to manage these configurations.

IT teams are also unable to manage their users’ cloud credentials effectively and enforce least privilege access policies. Not surprisingly, respondents to the SANS survey report that about half of successful cloud breaches involved credential hijacking.

How DeSeMa Can Help

Getting things like identity to flow seamlessly through the environment requires a hybrid, multi-cloud approach. If endpoint devices and user identities are treated as native to the cloud, there’s no break in the chain of authority.

DeSeMa specializes in configuring IT resources as an inherently hybrid, multi-cloud environment. We help organizations build unified CI/CD pipelines that can talk to any of the cloud providers. Applications can be deployed to endpoints as easily as they’re deployed to Azure or AWS. Few IT organizations imagine targeting their endpoints with their CI/CD pipelines, but all of the tools and utilities work the same way as they do with servers.

The DeSeMa team can tie the systems together correctly so that endpoints become native cloud components. They’re not third parties to the environment anymore. Thinking in a hybrid model not only improves security but increases agility by enabling the organization to take advantage of best-of-breed services from any provider.

Every organization that uses the cloud has a hybrid, multi-cloud environment — whether they realize it or not. By fully integrating their endpoints with cloud services, organizations can improve security, reduce complexity and streamline their IT operations.