Did you know which is the biggest cause of data breaches in the world? Human error. According to the Data Threat report by Thales, 55% of survey respondents said that human error is the biggest cause of data breaches. Add to that the number of sophisticated tools threat actors have at their disposal and you can easily see why cybersecurity professionals are playing catch up most of the time.
Most businesses jump on the cloud bandwagon without fully realizing the true security implications of it. Leverage automation and embrace a proactive approach to cybersecurity in order to stay ahead of the threat actors. That is where infrastructure as a code comes into play. In this article, we will discuss Infrastructure As a Code.
Table of Contents
Infrastructure As a Code: Everything You Need To Know
What is Infrastructure as a Code?
How Infrastructure as a Code Can Improve Your Cloud Security?
How To Integrate Infrastructure as a Code Into Your Cybersecurity Strategy?
Develop a Security Focused Mindset
Infrastructure As a Code: Everything You Need To Know
What is Infrastructure as a Code?
Infrastructure as a code is a practice of distributing computing resources with the help of scripts. You don’t have to rely on hardware configurations as well as interactive tools for resource provisioning. This makes managing your IT infrastructure a breeze, whether they are cheap dedicated servers, network or databases. This means that your entire IT infrastructure is written in code. As a result, it can easily be deployed securely and quickly.
How Infrastructure as a Code Can Improve Your Cloud Security?
Here are some of the ways in which infrastructure as a code can play a pivotal role in boosting your cloud security.
Consistency
IT infrastructure in general and cloud infrastructure in particular are prone to configuration issues. Infrastructure as a code can fix this problem by ensuring consistency across all platforms. When you define every element of the IT infrastructure as a code, you automatically make them identical in nature. This can reduce inconsistencies and misconfiguration issues.
Compliance
One of the core responsibilities of infrastructure as a code in a cloud environment is to optimize and streamline auditing and compliance processes so you can easily ensure compliance and meet regulatory requirements. Infrastructure as a code works on a version-controlled environment and maintains an audit trail which makes it easy to track every change you make.
Automating Security Policies
Most traditional IT infrastructure enforces security policies manually. This leaves the door open for human error and oversight. Security policies are also coded in an infrastructure as a code environment. This has two benefits, consistency and automation. This not only saves a lot of your time but also minimizes the risk of human error.
Rapid Incident Response
Infrastructure as a code enables swift incident response. Even if your IT infrastructure becomes a target of cybersecurity attack, you can easily decommission the infected cheap dedicated server hosting and replace them with newer cleaner instances quickly. This minimizes the damage attackers can do as well as reduces the downtime. It empowers your business to recover quickly from cybersecurity incidents. It can beef up the security of your cloud as well.
How To Integrate Infrastructure as a Code Into Your Cybersecurity Strategy?
Wondering how to integrate infrastructure as a code in your current cybersecurity strategy? Here is how.
Develop a Security Focused Mindset
In order to successfully integrate infrastructure as a code into your cybersecurity strategy, you will first have to develop a security centric mindset. Make security a priority and integrate it at each stage of the life cycle. The best thing about infrastructure as a code is that it allows you to code security policies directly into your infrastructure. The same can be said for security controls as well.
This means that everything you deploy in your IT infrastructure complies automatically with the security standards. This makes your business less prone to cybersecurity attacks.
Apply DevSecOps Principles
Infrastructure as a code is closely related to DevOps. Sadly, DevOps don;t have a security element to it. DevSecOps was introduced to fill in the gap. In order to integrate infrastructure as a code in your existing cybersecurity strategy, you will first have to implement DevSecOps principles in your organization.
Start off by enforcing DevSecOps security controls and checks into the coding process. Instead of considering it as an afterthought and implementing it at a later stage in the life cycle, you should integrate it from the beginning. When you implement DevSecOps principles in infrastructure as a code environment, your infrastructure becomes a part of your code base. This makes continuous integration and continuous deployment a breeze, which is at the heart of DevOps.
One of the biggest advantages of implementing DevSecOps principles is that you can review every change, and test it before deploying them. This streamlines the whole process and reduces the risk of human errors. This goes a long way in boosting your infrastructure security and keeping it updated.
Eliminate Complexity
As your IT infrastructure expands, it also becomes more sophisticated. As new devices and endpoints connect to your network, this increases your attack surface. It also gives more targets for attackers to hit. Simply put, the more complex your IT infrastructure might be the harder it is to secure.
Apart from security, complex IT infrastructures are hard to manage. You can easily see devices connected to your network as the numbers touch thousands. That is where infrastructure as a code can come in handy. It takes the pain out of infrastructure management and simplifies the whole process.