We are seeing more organizations overcome their cautions about the cloud and embrace its benefits. In fact, 69% of enterprises are moving business-critical applications to the cloud. And with the widespread stay-at-home orders during COVID-19, cloud usage is anticipated to increase. With more and more organizations migrating to the cloud, this has led to conversations about the security infrastructures in place for the cloud.

The Cloud Security Alliance summarizes the top threats to cloud security each year. The number one threat to cloud security is data breaches, according to their 2019 report. That’s why enterprises need strong authentication for users and systems (sometimes dynamic authentication), encrypted transport of data, and operational integrity. And your security solution must be flexible enough to scale as your business grows.

Responsibility for Cloud Security is Divided

One of the main challenges in cloud security solutions is that responsibility for security is divided between you and your service provider (Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, etc). And in private cloud services, internal staff is fully responsible for managing and securing the cloud. However, in all cloud solutions customers are responsible for identity and access management and for securing their data. Just as you would need to secure access and data in classic IT infrastructures, you can implement the same measures to secure the cloud. Read on for details on how DigiCert’s core security measures can be applied to challenges in securing the cloud.

Challenges in Moving to the Cloud

Customers migrating to the cloud or developing their cloud security often face the following problems:

1. Managing strong authentication for users and systems: Users have access to various cloud services, such as applications, cloud storage and other management interfaces. All of these should utilize strong authentication based on Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to ensure the most secure access. Systems, now that they are in the cloud, have a different security footprint since the network and physical server are no longer under direct control of the enterprise. This means that strong authentication between systems, encryption of communications and operational integrity of the systems are critical to manage. The easiest and most secure way to do this is with PKI.
2. Maintaining operational integrity: The Cloud Security Alliance notes that breaches in the cloud usually happen due to poor authentication standards, weak passwords and poor certificate management processes. There are many attack vectors to systems running in the cloud, and if a breach occurs, you will want to know if a system you have deployed has been changed. If you are using a container management solution, then container signing will allow you to know that the container executing IS the container (system) you expect to be executing — and also know when it is not. This technology, again, is based on PKI.
3. Providing these solutions at scale: We meet the customer where they are. Whether DigiCert is managing their PKI in our cloud scalable multi-tenant service, or they are deploying our solution in their own enterprise or cloud, DigiCert ONE is architected from the onset to take advantage of the cloud and all the scalability it provides.

PKI Can Help Secure the Cloud

At DigiCert’s core, we provide PKI solutions to secure digital trust. We can apply those same solutions to securing the cloud. DigiCert can help enterprises with cloud migration through public key infrastructure (PKI) to secure access to and usage of the cloud — and related services. DigiCert has PKI-based solutions for cloud migrations that enable strong security for cloud storage, enterprise systems, containerization, virtualization, orchestration, DevOps and contract signing. We can support a dynamic cloud environment from a strong authentication perspective through digital certificates, while supporting operational integrity — and all at scale. DigiCert also provides a platform to help customers manage their PKI all in one place.

Developed based on feedback from leading enterprises and IoT manufacturers, the DigiCert® ONE PKI management platform automates management processes, offering flexible deployment options and operating at scale. DigiCert ONE offers multiple management solutions and is designed for all forms of PKI. It is flexible enough to be deployed on-premises, in-country, or cloud to meet stringent requirements, custom integrations, and airgap needs. It also deploys extremely high volumes of certificates quickly using a robust and highly scalable infrastructure. DigiCert ONE delivers end-to-end centralized certificate, device, and integrity management, a modern approach to PKI.

Whether you’re new to the cloud or scaling your solutions, DigiCert can help. At DigiCert, we will continue servicing the incredible customers we have and enabling them to scale our solution throughout their organization as their different product lines introduce connectivity and require digital certificates. We are also actively working to assist companies that are just getting started with cloud security to help them get on the right path by implementing the basic cybersecurity hygiene of authenticating connections and encrypting data. And we collaborate with government and industry bodies to encourage appropriate standards for securing the cloud.