As cloud architectures grow more complex and data breaches more frequent, organizations are increasingly having to step up their cloud network security game. Not only are threat actors becoming more creative, but regulatory bodies are introducing compliance regulations like DORA to require tighter access controls and more visibility.
Unfortunately, security concerns often work directly against other metrics of network success like agility and cost. In worst-case scenarios, teams within the same organization push toward conflicting goals. Security teams prioritize stronger protections, while application teams seek greater flexibility and lower costs. These opposing objectives create major pain points that can cripple organizational efficiency.
Here are the four most critical pain points in cloud network security today and how to resolve them.
1. Agility & Self-Service vs. Security: The Delicate Balance
As they’re trying to innovate faster and speed up development cycles, application teams are increasingly advocating for agility and self-service capabilities within cloud environments. This desire for agility and self-service pushes organizations towards a more autonomous developmental approach.
Unfortunately, it also presents a challenge: the trade-off between empowering developers and ensuring a secure environment. The need for speed in development cycles often competes with the meticulous nature of security protocols, leading to potential vulnerabilities.
How to resolve this pain point: Empower developers with the tools and freedoms to innovate for organizational growth. At the same time, balance that freedom with comprehensive security measures that don’t obstruct the creative process. Explore solutions that integrate security into the development pipeline seamlessly, enabling a DevSecOps approach, to ensure agility does not come at the expense of security.
Discover how Aviatrix’s Infrastructure as Code solution integrates security policies with consistent and repeatable cloud architectures.
2. Legacy Cloud Architectures: A Bottleneck to Progress
The traditional hub-and-spoke models, designed around on-premises solutions such as Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs), are becoming increasingly irrelevant in the cloud era. These architectures introduce unnecessary complexity, reduce performance, and expand the blast radius of potential security incidents.
The rules and policies necessary to manage these architectures can also become unmanageable, leading to inefficiencies and increased risk. This model is particularly ill-suited for modern applications and architectures, such as Kubernetes, which demands more flexible and dynamic networking approaches.
How to resolve this pain point: Adopt modern cloud-native networking solutions that support the dynamic nature of containerized applications and microservices architectures to overcoming these bottlenecks. These solutions reduce complexity, improve performance, and, most importantly, enhance security posture.
Learn how the Aviatrix Kubernetes Firewall empowers organizations to secure and scale clusters with network-wide policy enforcement.
3. Centralized Architectures: A Financial Drain
Maintaining centralized hub-and-spoke models is not only operationally taxing but also expensive. Cloud providers and firewall vendors often charge premium fees for data processing, which, when combined with the costs of oversized VMs and expensive licenses, can create significant costs. These architectures, while traditional, are financially inefficient in the cloud-first world.
How to resolve this pain point: Look towards decentralized architectures that leverage the scalability and cost-efficiency of cloud services. By adopting a more distributed approach, you can not only address the security and complexity concerns associated with legacy models but also significantly reduce costs.
Explore the decentralized architecture and cost-optimization features of the Aviatrix Cloud Firewall.
4. Bypassing Central Security Controls: A Hidden Threat
The most concerning issue arising from these challenges is the tendency for application teams to bypass central security controls, opting instead for direct internet access without appropriate egress inspection. This practice, which often sneaks under the radar of Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs), exposes organizations to significant risks, including data breaches, compliance violations, and more.
How to resolve this pain point: Addressing this issue requires a two-pronged approach:
First, organizations must foster a culture of security awareness and compliance, ensuring that application teams understand the importance of adhering to security protocols.
Second, implement cloud-native security solutions that do not inhibit agility or performance to encourage adherence to security best practices without the need for bypassing controls.
View the Egress Security Score feature for Aviatrix Platform as a Service (PaaS), which reveals how well the VPCs/VNets in your network are protected.
A Holistic, Integrated Approach
Robust cloud security, like anything, will cost – in money, time, and effort. But adopting a holistic, integrated approach to cloud network security can help every networking team achieve its metrics without compromise: comprehensive security, high performance, operational agility, and optimized costs. By designing cloud architectures well, choosing the right cloud network security solution, implementing strategies and tools like Infrastructure as Code, and communicating well, organizations can collaborate to resolve everyone’s pain points.
