How to Secure Cloud Applications in a Multi-Cloud World
Multi-cloud has ushered in an era that promises resiliency and reduced vendor lock-in for financial institutions, but it is far from faultless. As banks and credit unions distribute their application infrastructure and workloads among different cloud providers, teams must navigate a complex landscape of security controls, compliance requirements, and risk management practices. It seems inevitable that embracing a multi-cloud strategy comes hand-in-hand with operational and security challenges – but don't let that deter your progress.
The Challenge of Workload Identity
Securing multi-cloud applications at financial institutions poses a significant challenge: managing workload identity. As illustrated by incidents like the 2023 Cloudflare and Okta breaches, the consequences of mishandled identities and access credentials in such environments can be catastrophic.
A nation-state attacker gained persistent access to Cloudflare's diverse internal systems by exploiting stolen authentication tokens and service account credentials from a prior Okta breach. This breach encompassed Cloudflare's Confluence wiki, Jira bug database, and Bitbucket source code management system. While Cloudflare's swift response (including cutting off access and rotating over 5,000 production credentials) mitigated further damage, the incident starkly highlights the difficulties in consistently managing identities and access controls across a dispersed multi-cloud architecture.
While securing infrastructure is crucial, threats can also manifest at runtime. A 2023 report by Armosec revealed a staggering 49% increase in runtime security incidents. As applications execute across multi-cloud environments, vulnerabilities and misconfigurations can lead to dangerous breaches. Banks and credit unions must implement monitoring, detection, and response capab...