Principles of a Cloud Migration – Security W5H – The HOW

“How about… ya!”

Security needs to be treated much like DevOps in evolving organizations; everyone in the company has a responsibility to make sure it is implemented. It is not just a part of operations, but a cultural shift in doing things right the first time – Security by default. Here are a few pointers to get you started:

1. Security should be a focus from the top on down

Executives should be thinking about security as a part of the cloud migration project, and not just as a step of the implementation. Security should be top of mind in planning, building, developing, and deploying applications as part of your cloud migration. This is why the Well Architected Framework has an entire pillar dedicated to security. Use it as a framework to plan and integrate security at each and every phase of your migration.

2. A cloud security policy should be created and/or integrated into existing policy

Start with what you know: least privilege permission models, cloud native network security designs, etc. This will help you start creating a framework for these new cloud resources that will be in use in the future. Your cloud provider and security vendors, like Trend Micro, can help you with these discussions in terms of planning a thorough policy based on the initial migration services that will be used. Remember from my other articles, a migration does not just stop when the workload has been moved. You need to continue to invest in your operation teams and processes as you move to the next phase of cloud native application delivery.

3. Trend Micro’s Cloud One can check off a lot of boxes!

Using a collection of security services, like Trend Micro’s Cloud One, can be a huge relief when it comes to implementing runtime security controls to your new cloud migration project. Workload Security is already protecting thousands of customers and billions of workload hours within AWS with security controls like host-based Intrusion Prevention and Anti-Malware, along with compliance controls like Integrity Monitoring and Application Control. Meanwhile, Network Security can handle all your traffic inspection needs by integrating directly with your cloud network infrastructure, a huge advantage in performance and design over Layer 4 virtual appliances requiring constant changes to route tables and money wasted on infrastructure. As you migrate your workloads, continuously check your posture against the Well Architected Framework using Conformity. You now have your new infrastructure secure and agile, allowing your teams to take full advantage of the newly migrated workloads and begin building the next iteration of your cloud native application design.

This is part of a multi-part blog series on things to keep in mind during a cloud migration project.  You can start at the beginning which was kicked off with a webinar here: https://resources.trendmicro.com/Cloud-One-Webinar-Series-Secure-Cloud-Migration.html. To have a more personalized conversation, please add me to LinkedIn!