Many businesses presume that the onus of security lies with the service provider but that is not always the case. The cloud service provider is responsible to ensure that the tools they provide are secure i.e. they manage security of the cloud while you as a customer will have to ensure the security of what you house in the cloud. Managed AWS security starts with the shared responsibility model that specifies the security responsibilities of AWS and what the client responsibilities are. The idea behind joint responsibility is to strengthen the complete security of the cloud environment.
Control will still be with you:
To gain the maximum mileage of the facilities available in the AWS public cloud, it is critical you understand your responsibilities so far as the security management is concerned. Managed AWS security will lessen the burden on your in-house technical experts. Your cloud service partner will implement the best security tools on top of the data hosted on the AWS instances. You trust your in-house trained experts to secure your critical applications. The control to decide what tools you wish to use to protect your information, networks, systems, and applications is with you.
Fallacy:
The major misconception that small businesses have is that they are too small to be attacked. They consider security as a job they must think about when their business grows. Some businesses get awed and think maintaining security is difficult. It requires special skills and tools which they do not possess. This, unfortunately, is a wrong thought. Security is part and parcel of application development and operation.
Compliance ready:
Managed AWS security is a practically feasible option since AWS has been serving customers for several years now and is compliance ready. With your application in their cloud, you are automatically secured and compliant across all the standards including SOC, ISO, PCI, DSS etc. You must not abandon the AWS cloud and the benefits you get from the services because you are overawed by the situation.
Delete terminated instances:
This is an important aspect of your responsibility. There are several AWS tools that you could use to clean the information in the terminated instances. Cloud scales on demand and you can create instances to manage traffic spikes. Organizations simply discard the instances once the requirement is completed. Using tools like AWS Lambda and CloudWatch Events, you can clean up the data lying there. You may use the AWS KMS (Key Management Service) to encrypt sensitive data and enable the AWS Lambda to decrypt the data.
IAM (identity and access Management): As part of your role in the managed AWS security service, you must take a decision on who can access what applications, what they can do and what they cannot get access to. This usually is considered as the first step towards the cloud security. This will give you control to decide which responsibility lies with whom. As a rule, you should never give “complete access” to all. This will require careful planning and time but will save you plenty of time, money and risk in the long run.
Incident Response: Use the AWS Cloud Trial to keep a track of all the moments and happenings in your cloud environment.
Economies of scale:
The managed AWS security services are ready with the tools and infrastructure as they have been serving the industry for years now. Serving several clients at one time allows sharing the cost burdens amongst them all. AWS keeps updating the security norms and upgrades its tools based on previous experience and customer feedback. The updates are automatically applied to all the customers without the need to spend additional resources or licenses.
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