What is Cloud Security Architecture? Principles, Framework, and Architecture Assessment

As companies undergo digital transformations and cloud migrations, their security tools must evolve. Without the right tools to protect enterprises using cloud technologies, they are at risk for serious security issues and threats, including data breaches and leaks. 

That’s where cloud security becomes necessary. Cloud security refers to the tools and strategies a company uses to protect data, applications, and infrastructure in the cloud. This includes policies, protocols, and security tools designed to protect the business from threats. Whether an organization is considering moving to the cloud or has been using cloud services regularly, it’s essential to understand cloud security and the principles behind its architecture. 

What is cloud security architecture?

Cloud security architecture is a fundamental component of cloud security. While cloud security is how an organization protects itself when using cloud services, cloud security architecture provides the framework and practices for implementing security tools and practices. 

Think of cloud security architecture like the blueprint for securing a physical building. It outlines the necessary security measures – such as access controls, surveillance systems, and emergency protocols – along with the overarching policies that dictate who has access to which areas and under what conditions. 

Similarly, in the cloud, the security architecture defines the security controls, policies, and procedures needed to protect data, applications, and infrastructure.

Cloud security architecture includes:

• Creating documentation and defining policies, rules, and protocols that govern cloud usage

• Choosing the right security tools and solutions

• Establishing workflows to define how security will be managed, monitored, and responded to

To put it simply, a strong cloud security architecture is the bedrock upon which effective cloud security is built. 

The importance of cloud computing security architecture

Cloud security architecture is crucial for managing cloud environments. An organization is at risk without proper cloud security architecture, as threats to cloud environments can’t be addressed through traditional security solutions. 

If an organization migrates to the cloud without a security plan, it can leave sensitive data or important applications open to threats. It also makes a security team’s job harder by requiring multiple solutions to secure the cloud environment, reducing overall visibility and opening the door to threats and vulnerabilities. 

Cloud security architecture ensures an organization adopting cloud computing or cloud environments has a security plan and is committed to protecting its data and critical systems. 

Types of cloud security architecture

The type of cloud security architecture a company designs will depend on the cloud services it’s using. Security isn’t one-size-fits-all, so organizations have to review the types of cloud computing they're using to determine the best strategy and architecture. 

When looking at cloud security architecture, there are four types of deployment models to consider:

Public cloud: Embracing shared infrastructure

Public cloud services are offered by third party providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and have a shared infrastructure, meaning multiple subscribers are using the services. Sort of like an apartment in a large building, you share the underlying infrastructure with other tenants. 

Providers take on the heavy lifting of securing the physical infrastructure with datacenters and core networking. However, as a “tenant,” you’re primarily responsible for the security within your apartment. In the cloud, this translates to managing user access, ensuring you're meeting compliance requirements for your data, and, most importantly, securing your data itself. 

Private cloud: Your dedicated space

A private cloud is like having your own standalone house. The cloud services are dedicated solely to your organization, whether they're hosted in your own data center (on-premises) or managed by a third-party provider just for you. This model offers more control over the environment and its security, which can be particularly appealing for organizations with strict compliance requirements or sensitive data. 

While you have more control, it also means you often have more responsibility. Depending on how your private cloud is set up, you might be managing a larger portion of the security stack, from the infrastructure up to the applications and data. 

Hybrid cloud: The best of both worlds

Imagine a hybrid cloud as a combination of your own house and a rented apartment. It's a blend of private and public cloud services, allowing you to leverage the flexibility and scalability of the public cloud while keeping sensitive data or critical applications within your private infrastructure. 

The security in a hybrid environment can be a bit more complex because you're managing security across two distinct environments. It's essential to have a unified security strategy and consistent policies that span both your private and public cloud components to ensure seamless protection.

Multi-cloud: Diversifying your cloud portfolio

A multi-cloud environment is like having apartments in different buildings, using services from multiple public cloud providers. This approach can offer benefits like cost optimization, preventing vendor lock-in, and allowing you to choose the best-of-breed services from different providers.

However, each public cloud provider has its own unique security policies, tools, and compliance measures. This means you'll need to understand and manage the security landscape across each of these providers. While the providers handle their own infrastructure security, your team will be responsible for securing your data, configuring access controls, and managing encryption consistently across all your cloud environments.

Key elements of a cloud security architecture

To maximize the benefits of cloud services, organizations need to build strong cloud security architectures. This involves integrating several key elements to ensure a robust, comprehensive strategy: 

Visibility

Imagine trying to secure a house in the dark. You wouldn't know where potential intruders are or what vulnerabilities exist. That's why visibility is paramount in cloud security. It's important to have a complete and continuous understanding of everything happening across your cloud environments and services. This is achieved by implementing tools like Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solutions, which continuously monitor your configurations for misalignments with security best practices and compliance standards. This allows for proactive threat and vulnerability detection, identification, and risk prioritization.  

Identity and access management

IAM is the cornerstone of cloud security and ensures the right people have the right level of access to the right resources – and nothing more. This is achieved by adhering to the principle of least privilege, granting users only the minimum permissions they need to perform their tasks. Implementing Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) adds an extra layer of security by requiring users to provide more than just a password. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) simplifies management by assigning permissions based on job roles rather than individual users. Concepts like Zero Trust architecture and Privileged Access Management (PAM) further enhance IAM by assuming no user or device is inherently trustworthy and by tightly controlling access for privileged accounts.

Data protection

In the cloud, data is often the most valuable asset you need to protect. Data protection involves implementing a multi-layered approach to secure sensitive information throughout its lifecycle. This includes data encryption both when it's stored ("at rest") and when it's being transmitted ("in transit") using strong encryption algorithms. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) measures help prevent sensitive data from leaving your control. Data classification is crucial for understanding the sensitivity of different data types and applying appropriate security controls. Finally, establishing data backup and recovery strategies ensures business continuity in case of data loss or disaster. You'll also want to consider data sovereignty and residency requirements, especially if you operate in multiple geographic regions.

Threat detection and response

Even with strong preventative measures, threats can still emerge. Identify and respond to suspicious patterns and anomalies using security information and event management (SIEM) systems. Cloud workload protection platforms (CWPP) also detect threats targeting your specific workloads by utilizing various threat detection tools. However, detection is only half the battle. Developing a comprehensive incident response plan that outlines the steps to take when a security incident occurs is equally important. This plan should include clear roles, responsibilities, communication protocols, and procedures for containment, eradication, and recovery.

Governance, risk, and compliance

Maintain security and compliance standards establishing clear security policies and procedures that align with industry best practices and relevant regulations (like SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, PCI DSS). Utilizing Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) tools helps ensure continuous compliance monitoring and identifies deviations from established security baselines. Implementing risk mitigation protocols helps you identify, assess, and address potential security risks. Finally, conducting regular security audits helps verify the effectiveness of your security controls and identify areas for improvement. 

Infrastructure-as-code (IaC) security

Prevent misconfigurations by embedding security into the infrastructure-building process from the very beginning. This "shift left" approach helps prevent misconfigurations and vulnerabilities from being introduced into your cloud environment.    

Network security

While the cloud abstracts away some traditional networking concepts, network security remains a critical element. Safeguard network traffic both within your cloud environment and between your cloud and on-premises resources by implementing cloud-native firewalls and intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS) to help control network access and identify malicious activity. Virtual private networks (VPNs) ensures secure communication channels and secure application programming interfaces (APIs) serve as the primary interface for accessing cloud services and data.  

Automation

Automation is key to enhancing efficiency and improving your security response time. You can enhance efficiency and response time by automating repetitive tasks like threat detection, response, and remediation processes. For example, automatically isolating compromised instances, patching vulnerabilities, or enforcing security configurations can significantly reduce the impact of security incidents.  

The principles of cloud security architecture

When looking at cloud security architecture, there are three guiding principles: integrity, availability, and confidentiality. 

• Integrity: Data and systems integrity. This involves maintaining the accuracy and consistency of data and systems to prevent data changes and keep systems reliable. Monitoring integrity prevents unauthorized access, malicious or accidental modification or deletion of data, and keeps systems free from vulnerabilities.  

• Availability: Ensures authorized users can access cloud resources and data reliably and consistently. Reducing service disruption involves implementing redundancy, minimizing downtime, and protecting against service-related attacks. 

• Confidentiality: Protecting sensitive data from unauthorized access. Cloud data and resources should only be accessible to authorized users and devices by implementing access management controls and least privilege, encryption, and data masking techniques. 

Shared responsibility within cloud security architectures

In the public cloud, security is a shared responsibility between you, the customer, and your Cloud Service Provider (CSP). This is defined by the shared responsibility model, which clearly outlines who is responsible for what aspects of security. The CSP takes responsibility for the security of the cloud – the underlying infrastructure, including the physical data centers, networking, and virtualization layers. They ensure the foundational services are secure.

However, you, the customer, are responsible for the security in the cloud – everything you put into it and configure. This typically includes your data, applications, operating systems (in some models), network configurations, access controls, and compliance with relevant regulations.

Understanding this division is crucial for building a secure cloud environment. Customers with multi-cloud environments have to pay special attention to shared responsibilities within each environment. 

(Note: This is a simplified example, and the exact responsibilities can vary depending on the specific cloud service model you are using, which we'll discuss next.)

Cloud security architectures by service model

Cloud security architectures will vary depending on the type of cloud services a company uses. The three main cloud service models are:

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): A vendor provides cloud computing infrastructure and resources in the cloud that can be used for things like hosting websites and apps. 

  • Examples: Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines. 

• Platform as a Service (PaaS): A vendor hosts the platform in the cloud for developing, running, and managing applications. 

  • Examples: Microsoft Azure App Service, Google App Engine, AWS Elastic Beanstalk. 

• Software as a Service (SaaS): A vendor hosts an application and its infrastructure in the cloud for a subscriber to use.  

  • Examples: Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce. 

Adapting cloud security architecture for IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS

When looking at the shared responsibility model, security responsibilities shift between the customer and service provider depending on the service model.

• IaaS: Most responsibility falls on customers. Customers must manage the operating systems, applications, middleware, and data. Service providers manage the underlying infrastructure. 

• PaaS: More responsibility falls on providers. Customers manage applications and data, while service providers manage the underlying infrastructure, including the operating system, middleware, and runtime environment.   

• SaaS: Most responsibility falls on providers. Customers use the applications, but the provider manages the infrastructure, operating system, and application software. 

Although responsibility is shared, it’s still vital that organizations maintain and adapt their cloud security architecture to avoid security gaps or a lack of visibility. Assuming that a provider is responsible for all security or adopting a new service model without updating your architecture can result in serious security issues or threat exploitation.   

5 Cloud security architecture threats

A key part of building a cloud security architecture is accounting for cloud environment threats. Some of the most common cloud security threats include:

1. Misconfigurations: Incorrect security settings in a cloud environment can lead to vulnerabilities or exposed data. This can include using default authentication credentials, overly permissive access controls, or leaving vulnerabilities unpatched.  

2. Account hijacking: When an attacker or malicious user gains access to user credentials. This can occur through phishing attacks, credential stuffing, or vulnerabilities. Often used to gain access to sensitive data, disrupt services, or carry out lateral movement in the cloud environment. 

3. Insecure APIs: APIs are the connection between apps and external systems and are often used to manage cloud resources. If insecure, attackers could gain unauthorized access to sensitive data and functionality. Injection attacks are also possible.  

4. Denial of service (DoS) attacks: When cloud services become overwhelmed by unauthorized traffic, preventing authorized users from using the services. This can cause major disruptions and financial losses to organizations. 

5. Insider threats: When authorized users of a cloud environment carry out accidental or intentionally malicious actions. Insider threats can lead to data breaches, misconfigurations, financial losses, and more. 

While this list isn’t exhaustive, knowing some of the most common threats can help an organization create a more robust cloud security architecture. It can also help prevent and detect future security issues as attackers and threats evolve. 

5 Steps to assess your cloud security architecture

Whether an organization has an existing cloud security architecture or is in the process of designing one, it’s important to continually assess security strategy. Regularly assessing cloud security architecture helps identify vulnerabilities and adapt to emerging threats. To ensure a cloud security architecture is effective and identify areas of improvement, follow these five steps:

1. Identify and map assets. To have a complete picture of security within a cloud environment, identify and inventory all assets that exist there. Assets include virtual machines, containers, databases, applications, APIs, and data. After inventorying them, map them to security controls to identify any potential vulnerabilities. 

2. Check for compliance. Cloud environments must still meet industry regulations and compliance standards. Ideally, use a combination of automated tools and manual reviews to confirm that security controls meet compliance standards.  

3. Run tests. Regularly testing your cloud environment can help identify vulnerabilities and threats and confirm that your security controls are effective. Testing can include penetration tests and vulnerability assessments with tools that scan your infrastructure, containers, applications, and configurations. 

4. Implement automated monitoring. Continuous, real-time monitoring is essential for finding and addressing security issues. Automated monitoring tools should track user activity and analyze security logs for suspicious behavior and activity. 

5. Review and refine processes. Continually reviewing and refining processes will ensure they remain aligned with business objectives and goals. As processes are reviewed and refined, update and optimize policies, controls, and plans. 

Securing Your Cloud Architecture with Snyk

Snyk offers a comprehensive suite of tools that empower your development teams to build secure infrastructure and containers right from the start. Snyk’s AI powered platform integrates security for your applications, platforms, and infrastructure directly into your development process, to help you with application security and DevSecOps governance. This "shift left" approach means security becomes a natural part of building, not a last-minute hurdle, making things smoother for everyone and reducing the chance of surprises later. 

With tools like Snyk IaC to secure your infrastructure code and Snyk Container to keep your containers safe, you can build with more confidence and focus on innovation. To explore more into building a secure cloud journey with a focus on shifting security left, download the full whitepaper, "Start left: your secure cloud journey".