What is Cloud Security Compliance? Types & Best Practices

Cloud security compliance includes guidelines, principles, and best practices that an organization must follow to stay digitally safe from attacks and avoid non-compliance issues and penalties.

Data privacy and security risks are growing worldwide, affecting organizations of all sizes and types as they move their IT infrastructure to the cloud.

Therefore, regulatory bodies and law enforcement agencies have created compliance regulations, laws, and standards that organizations must follow to safeguard business and customer data stored in cloud environments.

Complying with these standards helps reduce cybersecurity attacks, data breaches, and privacy violations. In a 2023 survey, 70% of company leaders agree these regulations are effective.

In this article, we’ll discuss cloud security compliance in detail, its types, how to obtain it, and best practices.

What Is Cloud Security Compliance?

Cloud security compliance is a process consisting of various rules, best practices, and policies that an organization should follow to secure data in its cloud environments and adhere to applicable authorities and compliance standards like HIPAA, GDPR, etc.

Due to the growing number of cybersecurity attacks and data privacy risks, regulatory bodies and law enforcement agencies have framed these laws, regulations, and standards. This helps organizations of all sizes, shapes, and industries keep business and customer data private and secure. These standards are even more important for highly regulated sectors, such as finance, government, healthcare, military, etc., where data is highly confidential.

By complying with cloud security standards, you can uphold your reputation in the industry before your customers, stakeholders, partners, and third parties, and maintain trust. This also enables you to prevent security risks like data breaches, permission escalations, and more.

Cloud Security Compliance Standards

Let’s quickly learn about some of the important cloud security compliance standards:

• GDPR: It stands for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and is applicable to all organizations operating in the countries under the European Union. It contains strict rules that protect the personal data of users and how it’s managed.
• HIPAA: It stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and applies to organizations operating in the US. It’s data security and privacy rules protect the health records of patients, prevent healthcare fraud and abuse, and improve healthcare service access.
• SOC 2: It stands for system and organization controls (SOC) version 2. If you achieve this certification, it’s proof that you comply with SOC 2 standards. SOC 2 depends on these criteria that organizations need to ensure when managing data – security, privacy, confidentiality, process integrity, and service availability. An independent, certified auditor will assess your organization’s security and privacy posture based on those criteria to verify if you comply with SOC 2 standards.
• ISO/IEC 27001: It’s a globally popular and widely accepted standard that guides organizations on how to set up, apply, maintain, and improve information security. If you achieve this compliance, it’s proof that you follow best practices to protect data and manage risks.

How Do You Obtain Cloud Compliance?

To obtain cloud compliance, you must implement advanced, robust security and compliance measures in your organization’s cloud environment.

Security measures:

• Protect your IT infrastructure and data stored in the cloud
• Use adequate access controls
• Implement end-to-end data encryption
• Monitor, detect, and respond to threats continuously
• Perform regular audits
• Provide security training to your staff

Compliance measures:

• Keep up with the latest changes in regulatory requirements for cloud deployments
• Know about rules and regulations applicable to your organization and adhere to them
• Follow suitable compliance frameworks and guidelines
• Achieve required certifications like ISO/IEC 27001
• Streamline regulatory reporting
• Automate compliance processes

Types of Security Compliances

Some of the types of cloud security and compliance requirements include:

• HIPAA: To protect healthcare data
• SOC 2: To safeguard customer data
• PCI DSS: To secure credit card details
• ISO: To secure and manage confidential data
• GDPR: To control, process, and store personal data of EU citizens

Cloud Compliance and Security Frameworks

Cloud services offer you plenty of benefits. These are efficient and easy to scale, access, and use. But, using third-party cloud services brings security and privacy risks as you have no control or visibility on what tools, mechanisms, and techniques they use to protect your sensitive data.

Enter cloud compliance frameworks. If you align your security and compliance policies with these frameworks, you can reduce risks when deploying a cloud service. Here are some of these frameworks for you to know:

FedRAMP

Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) provides standards for assessing security, monitoring cloud services and products, and authorization. Cloud solution providers, federal agencies, and organizations operating in the US must follow FedRAMP guidelines to protect cloud data. It aims at:

• Improving Cloud security and assessments
• Promoting the use of secure, cloud-based products and services
• Enable organizations to adapt quickly to cost-effective cloud solutions instead of legacy solutions
•  Facilitate smooth collaboration between organizations and maintain transparency and mutual trust by following the same guidelines

Cloud Security Alliance Controls Matrix

CSA Control Matrix outlines guidelines to assess how an organization implements cloud services systematically and guides what security controls to use. This framework is a de-facto standard to achieve cloud compliance and security. It contains 197 control objectives divided into 17 domains around loud technology. Here’s what it covers:

• CCM v4
• CCM machine readable
• CCM metrics
• Auditing guidelines
• Implementation guidelines
• CAIQ v4
• Mappings

NIST Cybersecurity Framework

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has framed the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. It outlines a set of guidelines, standards, and rules for organizations to follow and achieve comprehensive security and compliance.

Some of these standards are: NIST SP 500-291 (2011), NIST SP 500-293 (2014), NIST SP 800-53 Rev.5 (2020), and NIST SP 800-210 (2020).

Use these guidelines to assess risks and manage security when creating a compliance program from scratch. Its core functions include:

• Identifying what assets, data, and processes to protect
• Protecting them by using secure technologies and tools
• Detecting security incidents with the help of suitable tools and mechanisms
• Responding to incidents using proactive techniques and tools
• Recovering and restoring affected systems

ISO 27000 Standards

The International Standards Organization (ISO) provides a set of standards and best practices to protect data and systems from cybersecurity threats. Complying with these standards allows you to secure your organization and assets and keep data private. Some of these standards include:

• ISO/IEC 27001: This standard provides principles and best practices to secure data that an organization owns or handles. It documents how to set up, implement, improve, and maintain information security management systems. It helps you improve your security posture, manage risks, and achieve better operational excellence.

• ISO/IEC 27017: It defines security controls for provisioning and using cloud services and aims to solve cloud security challenges.

• ISO/IEC 27018: It defines control objectives and instructions to implement security measures for safeguarding personal data stored in cloud environments.

Achieving ISO certifications will help you secure your IT infrastructure while boosting your reputation and credibility in the market.

Architected Cloud Frameworks

Use architected cloud frameworks by tech giants, such as AWS, Google, and Microsoft to implement cloud solutions in your organization. These cloud frameworks provide architectural principles and best practices while deploying cloud solutions. This helps you adopt cloud computing with compliance and security by preventing security risks and improving cloud performance.

Here are some of the cloud architecture frameworks you should know:

• AWS Well-Architected Framework: Offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), this framework details relevant questions to assess your cloud environments and help you create software and workflows on AWS. It works on these principles – cloud cost optimization, operational performance, reliability, security, and compliance.
• Azure Architecture Framework: This framework by Microsoft allows your architects to build cloud solutions on Azure. Its guidelines help you optimize your workloads and improve data security.
• Google Cloud Architected Framework: Google’s framework provides guidelines while creating cloud solutions on Google Cloud. It also works on principles like cost optimization, reliability, operational performance, compliance, and security.

Cloud Security Compliance Best Practices

Follow the below best practices when creating your cloud security compliance strategy:

1. Audit Regularly

Conduct audits regularly to keep detecting compliance issues and security risks and mitigate them before they can affect your organization.

You can do it internally or from an external auditor to ensure your organization is aligned with applicable compliance requirements and laws. This protects your organization from non-compliance issues and penalties while giving you insights on how you can improve your security postures.

2. Automate Processes

Integrate automation in your security and compliance processes. This will make the process more efficient than manually doing everything on your own. You can automate various steps like collecting data for audits, correlating rules and requirements, and so on.

3. Secure and Backup Your Data

Always back up and secure your sensitive data stored in the cloud. So, even if an attack happens, you won’t lose your data forever or delay operations. By backing up your data in multiple secure places, you can restore it anytime and run your business.

Similarly, have robust, advanced security strategies in place to secure your cloud data. Use technologies and techniques such as multi-factor authentication (MFA), end-to-end encryptions, zero-trust security, and more.

4. Monitor Access Controls

Set up strong access controls to prevent unauthorized access and data leaks. Utilize techniques such as Single Sign-on (SSOs), identity and access management (IAM), user authentication mechanisms, and more. This way, people with required access permissions can only access specific data or systems.

In addition, monitor access controls continuously and detect irregular or suspicious patterns. Once you detect such activities, revisit your access control mechanisms and modify them.

5. Stay Updated

Compliance laws and regulations keep on changing. But if you don’t track them and modify your compliance and security strategies accordingly, you may come under their scrutiny.

So, always stay updated with recent changes in compliance regulations and cybersecurity activities. Keep your organizations prepared to face those security risks and maintain reports to be ready for audits all the time.

6. Train Your Staff

Conduct periodic training sessions for your employees to enable them to identify and respond to security risks and compliance issues. Explain to them the impacts of non-compliance and security incidents on an organization and get them battle-ready. In addition, form security policies and communicate them to your employees so they can protect their systems and data from cybersecurity attacks.

Cloud Security Compliance Checklist

Consider the below cloud security compliance checklist to ensure your organization stays compliant with applicable regulations and standards:

• Data storage: Define what to store in the cloud and what not to, along with the proper reason.
• Manage assets: Manage your assets and data by tracking each one of them and updating them when needed.
• Location: Try to track data location.
• Access controls: Know who can access what information and at what level by defining strong access controls.
• Data encryption: Encrypt data to protect it when it’s stationary and during transmission.
• Manage configurations: Revisit cloud configurations regularly and update them.
• Data security: Find out how your cloud provider manages your data.
• SLAs: Ensure you’re compliant with applicable regulations and laws related to SLA requirements.

Real-World Examples and Case Studies

Let’s discuss some real-world case studies related to cloud security compliance.

Uber Data Breach (2016)

Case: In October 2016, Uber faced a massive data breach, exposing 57 million data of drivers and riders. However, it only reported the breach in November 2017.

The company had to pay $148 million in damages in a settlement with the US state attorney general. Because of delaying the disclosure, regulatory bodies and law enforcement agencies scrutinized the company more. It increased more compliance challenges for the company and customers and drivers started losing trust.

Root Cause: Inadequate security and compliance measures in place were the primary reasons behind the data breach.

• Stored AWS credentials improperly on a public GitHub repository
• Poor security in development processes
• Insufficient access controls to critical systems and data
• Paying $100,000 to attackers to silence the breach, instead of reporting it immediately to authorities.

Lessons Learned: The Uber data breach case teaches you how important it is to use stronger security measures and adhere to compliance regulations. You can learn from it:

• The importance of reporting security incidents immediately to authorities
• Having process access controls
• Keeping credentials in private clouds
• Encrypting sensitive information
• Communicating the case to employees and customers to uphold trust
• Continuous monitoring and response

2. Capital One Data Breach

Case: The American bank holding firm, Capital One, suffered a huge data breach in 2019. It exposed data of more than 6 million Canadian people and 100 million US people. Cloud infrastructure vulnerabilities led to this attack. The company had to pay $190 million as a settlement to resolve lawsuits by affected customers. It also caused legal issues from regulatory bodies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

Root cause: Many factors were the reason this breach occurred:

• Firewall misconfiguration, allowing the attacker to access company servers
• Insufficient security monitoring that couldn’t detect unauthorized access
• Failure to detect and remove a server-side request forgery
• Improper user input validation

Lessons learned: The Capital One data breach emphasizes cloud security for organizations. It teaches you to:

• Configure devices correctly
• Perform continuous monitoring to detect vulnerabilities
• Implement stronger security measures like authentication and authorization
• Have an effective incident response plan

3. Tesla Cluster Hijack

Case: Attackers hijacked Tesla’s Kubernetes cluster in 2018 for cryptocurrency mining. It happened mainly because of an unprotected Kubernetes console.

Consequently, Tesla’s cloud computing resources were exhausted for mining, which increased operational costs. It also led to security by regulatory bodies and tarnished the company’s reputation in terms of system security and data privacy.

Root cause: The attack happened due to these reasons:

• Without proper authentication mechanisms in place, the attackers managed to access the company’s Kubernetes console. They installed a crypto mining software on its cloud infrastructure to mine cryptocurrencies.
• Poor configuration practices
• Improper network segmentation helped attackers move laterally in Tesla’s cloud infrastructure
• Insufficient monitoring and detection

Lessons learned: The Tesla case teaches you the importance of taking the following security measures:

• Use powerful authorization and authentication mechanisms
• Segment your network properly to avoid lateral movements
• Continuous threat monitoring, detection, and response

Conclusion

Achieving cloud security compliance enables you to adhere to applicable regulations and laws and avoid penalties. It also helps secure your data, systems, and network from attacks and improve operational efficiency.

Learn about the popular cloud security frameworks, standards, and guidelines to follow. Also, consider the best practices to improve your compliance efforts.

If you’re looking for an advanced, AI-powered cybersecurity platform to manage cloud security, use SentinelOne’s cybersecurity platform. You will get features like Singularity Data Lake, compliance integration, threat monitoring and prevention, and more.

FAQs

What is Cloud Security Compliance?

Cloud security compliance refers to a process that an organization follows to adhere to applicable rules, regulations, and laws.

What are Cloud Security Compliance Standards?

Cloud security compliance standards are various guidelines, frameworks, best practices, and requirements for organizations to follow to achieve compliance.

How do Cloud Security Compliance Tools Work?

Cloud security compliance tools provide you with deeper visibility into your security posture and operations along with compliance controls to ensure you follow applicable regulations.

What are the Security and Compliance Requirements in a Public Cloud?

In public clouds, security and compliance requirements for organizations are as follows:

• Continuous security and compliance monitoring
• Periodic upgrades and patches
• Setting up stronger access controls
• Implementing advanced network security tools and firewalls
• Using data encryption and security mechanisms

What is the Difference Between Cloud Compliance and Traditional IT Compliance?

Obtaining compliance in the cloud is relatively easier compared to traditional IT infrastructure. The reason is your cloud service provider will manage most aspects of the cloud but you don’t get that benefit in traditional setups. You’ll need to do everything on your own to achieve compliance.