Protect Your Cloud Workload Migration With Illumio CloudSecure

In recent years, businesses of all sizes have been increasingly drawn to the cloud, enticed by the promise of scalability, cost efficiency, and enhanced collaboration. Yet, with this rapid adoption comes a hidden threat – attackers are perpetually seeking vulnerabilities to exploit.  

Shockingly, 47 percent of all data breaches originate in the cloud, resulting in an average cost of $4.1 million for affected organizations, according to recent research by Vanson Bourne.  

While the migration of workloads to the cloud brings many advantages, it’s crucial to acknowledge and address the security concerns that accompany this shift.  

In this blog post, we'll delve into how Zero Trust Segmentation can help organizations ensure they have consistent security across data center and cloud environments.

First, get a quick overview of how the Illumio ZTS Platform secures cloud workload migration in this video:

Is your critical data at risk in the cloud?

With almost all organizations storing sensitive data in the cloud, one of the foremost concerns when migrating workloads to the cloud is ensuring the protection and privacy of sensitive data. Organizations are entrusting their critical information to cloud service providers (CSPs), increasing the risk of unauthorized access, data breaches, and regulatory non-compliance.  

Organizations must prioritize implementing robust encryption mechanisms, access controls, and regular security audits to safeguard their data in transit and at rest.

The Shared Responsibility Model

Many cloud providers follow the Shared Responsibility Model wherein providers take on responsibility for securing the infrastructure and physical data centers. But in an “uneven handshake,” providers expect customers to secure their own cloud data, applications, and configurations.  

Unfortunately, this division of responsibilities often leads to misunderstandings and gaps in security.  

To mitigate this risk, organizations must clearly delineate their security responsibilities with the cloud provider, establish comprehensive security policies, and conduct regular assessments to ensure compliance.

3 reasons why traditional security methods are failing us in the cloud

Cloud environments are ever-changing, introducing unique challenges that can lead to security gaps and breaches. Because of this, traditional security approaches don’t provide the level of visibility, flexibility, and consistency that a purpose-built cloud security platform can offer.  

Here are the most important reasons why traditional security methods don’t work in the cloud:

1. Hybrid, multi-cloud environments are increasingly complex: As networks get more complex, it's very difficult to map a legacy IT infrastructure onto the cloud, especially when many organizations are blending public and private clouds in a hybrid cloud environment.

2. Lack of complete cloud visibility: In the cloud, complete visibility is essential — you can’t secure what you can’t see. Without complete cloud visibility, risks can go unnoticed, especially in how storage, applications, servers, and databases are communicating.  

3. Incorrect application settings: The built-in security settings in cloud platforms have the potential to get miscoded or misconfigured, leaving security gaps in the cloud.  

How Zero Trust Segmentation secures cloud workload migration

If your organization is migrating cloud workloads, you’re already at increased risk. It’s essential to build cyber resilience against the next inevitable cyberattack. The best way to achieve cyber resilience is through adopting a Zero Trust security strategy based on a “never trust, always verify” mindset.

Zero Trust Segmentation (ZTS) is a key pillar of Zero Trust — you cannot achieve Zero Trust without it. Unlike traditional perimeter-based security, ZTS operates at the application or workload level, allowing organizations to achieve a consistent approach to defining and enforcing security policies at a granular level across the entire hybrid attack surface. ZTS is easy and simple in comparison to attempting segmentation with static, legacy firewalls.

With ZTS, you can:

• Eliminate security blind spots by getting a real-time view of traffic flows. This helps keep security consistent by providing end-to-end visibility and enforcement of all workloads, agnostic to the underlying network infrastructure.  
• Set granular, flexible security policies that provide consistent protection for application and workloads. Proactively prepare for attacks and reactively isolate breaches.
• Achieve a secure migration process without compromising the integrity of sensitive data by maintaining consistent security policies across on-premises and cloud environments.

Illumio CloudSecure: Extend ZTS across any data center and cloud

Addressing these challenges head-on, Illumio CloudSecure, part of the Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation Platform, offers end-to-end visibility and consistent security across cloud resource traffic flows and workloads. Start your free 30-day trial of Illumio CloudSecure today.

Migrate to the cloud confidently without compromising on security

Illumio CloudSecure ensures a seamless and secure transition during the digital transformation journey. With Illumio, security and cloud operations teams can build cyber resilience by deploying a single solution that enforces ZTS across any data center and cloud.

CloudSecure’s proactive approach to visualizing cloud workload connectivity and applying segmentation controls to contain cloud attacks ensures that security measures are in place even before the migration process begins. This thwarts potential attackers and fortifies your organization against data breaches.

Leverage traffic flow telemetry for complete visibility and automated policy updates

Illumio CloudSecure can also collect the traffic flow telemetry from AWS VPC or Azure NSG flow logs to constantly update metadata describing network traffic. These flow logs are then sent to cloud storage, and Illumio fetches this data for analysis.  

By leveraging AWS Resource Explorer, Azure Resource Manager, or other native tools, CloudSecure creates and attaches labels to telemetry data by collecting cloud resource tags and other cloud metadata (like the name of the region, the VPC name, etc.). These labels are in plain, easy-to-understand language, providing security teams with a better understanding of what connectivity a resource should have versus what it currently has.

CloudSecure can then present all of this information as a visualization, providing real-time visibility of application deployments and traffic telemetry. With these insights, security teams can author and apply policies for strict access controls.

By assuming that no element of the network is trustworthy by default, Illumio’s approach significantly enhances your organization's ability to protect its assets and data. It's a proactive and dynamic security framework that adapts to today’s ever-evolving threats.

Watch the Illumio CloudSecure demo to learn more:

Try Illumio CloudSecure free for 30 days. No software to install or credit card required.