Solving Cloud Security Challenges with the Shared Responsibility Model

Deciding to move a portion or all of your operations to the cloud can be a big step toward improving your business's overall agility. It can give you the flexibility you need to quickly scale new applications and services while giving you a more economical way to ensure organizational growth.

However, speed and agility don’t always allow room for added security. Cloud operations can introduce a whole new threat landscape, and not all businesses are prepared to deal with it. While you might be thinking that “cloud security” is something that cloud service providers (CSPs) are responsible for, you might be surprised to know that you’re still accountable for certain elements of data security.

This is where the Shared Responsibility Model (SRM) comes into play. This is an essential framework that helps define where security obligations rest as you expand your business into cloud environments, while also providing greater clarity and perspective when addressing common cloud challenges.

Core Concepts of the Shared Responsibility Model (SRM)

Chances are, one of the primary reasons you decided to expand your operations into the cloud was to help free up a certain amount of internal resources. Not having to set up and configure servers and databases manually can save a lot of time and give your internal teams more flexibility to care for other critical elements of the business.

However, while offloading your infrastructure management shifts some responsibility to your CSP for ensuring service minimums, this doesn’t necessarily mean the responsibility for data integrity and security transfers as well.

The SRM helps create a formal framework that outlines where data security responsibilities lie for both cloud partners and clients. This includes how various controls are managed, applied, and updated on both sides of the agreement.

Distinguishing Provider Security vs. Customer Security

When you enter into cloud agreements, there are two important concepts you’ll want to understand: Security of the Cloud and Security in the Cloud.

Security of the Cloud covers all of the accountabilities that are handled by your provider. This is very similar to agreements you might make when entering into a tenancy and landlord-tenant construct. CSPs act as the landlord and are responsible for ensuring the structural integrity of your business’s infrastructure, as well as any physical security measures over stored data. This means protecting the physical network hardware and handling the maintenance required to keep the lights on and the servers running.

On the other side of this agreement are your own obligations, captured by the Security in the Cloud guidelines. When you put data in the cloud, you retain accountability for its protection. Although you’re not responsible for deploying and maintaining cloud infrastructure, you are responsible for Identity and Access Management (IAM), hardening your applications, and configuring network segmentation to protect the data contained within it.

Going back to the landlord and tenant metaphor, if you’re renting a space and decide to leave your front door unlocked, the landlord (CSP) isn't responsible if something gets stolen or destroyed. The same principle applies in cloud agreements.

How Accountability Shifts Across Service Models

While the SRM has predefined guidelines surrounding duties and responsibilities of both the provider and their clients, these accountabilities aren’t static. Depending on the type of service model your business has subscribed to, accountabilities can shift accordingly.

Below are the primary cloud models and how responsibilities differ between each:

• IaaS: Managing the Stack — In an Infrastructure as a Service model, the CSP is responsible for the security of all core infrastructure. This includes physical data centers, storage hardware, and the virtualization layer. You are then responsible for securing everything above that layer. This includes securing the guest operating system, managing middleware, and protecting the application source code and the data itself.
• PaaS: Shared Control — Platforms as a Service models shift more responsibility to the CSP. They take over the operating systems, database management, and runtime environments. This lightens your infrastructure load, allowing your team to focus almost exclusively on governing and securing your services and applications.
• SaaS: Data-Focused Security — Subscribing to various Software as a Service models is typically the least labor-intensive option regarding infrastructure, since the CSP handles the entire stack. However, total infrastructural oversight doesn't mean you’re still not responsible for security. You are still responsible for governing user access, setting permissions, and managing administrative security configurations.

Why the SRM is Important to Your Business

Removes Operational Grey Areas

Cloud operations are synonymous with speed and efficiency. You might be looking forward to the benefits this arrangement offers without necessarily considering all the implications if security isn’t handled properly.

SRM plays a helpful role in removing operational grey areas that might be missed when focusing more on scaling and improving apps and services. If you or your CSP assume the other person is handling critical security elements, this can lead to dangerous gaps. The SRM helps to eliminate this vagueness so that both parties have a clear view of their individual accountabilities at the start of a partnership.

Prevents Reliance on Vendor Assumptions

There can be a lot of assumptions as you enter into new cloud relationships. This is especially the case if your business is new to running cloud operations or looking for ways to simplify your onboarding processes.

However, it’s important to remember that simply paying a subscription fee doesn’t mean CSPs handle everything. SRM helps to provide this much-needed perspective, keeping your business grounded by ensuring you’re always proactively involved in data protection and risk management.

Ensures Complete Regulatory Coverage

Maintaining compliance in cloud settings isn’t always straightforward. There can be a lot of boxes that need to be checked with both your business and CSP. Trying to communicate these back and forth during audits can be next to impossible unless both parties are on the same page from day one.

The SRM helps to provide definitive guidelines on what infrastructural elements belong to each party, as well as how each of them should fit into a larger compliance framework.

Practical Security Benefits of Applying an SRM Framework

Establishing Accountability and Reducing Errors

Your business should have defined ownership over every security activity it carries out, whether on-prem or in the cloud. The SRM makes this process much easier by helping you to assign specific duties to both internal teams and your CSPs, allowing you to create governance protocols that align with parties’ capabilities.

Formalizing shared accountabilities helps reduce any "assumption-based" security strategies that often lead to exploitable weaknesses.

Reducing Redundant Security Workloads

By giving you a clear picture of what your CSP handles from a security perspective, it helps you to reduce wasted internal resources in areas that you aren’t directly responsible for. You’re able to offload all of the time-consuming, heavy-lifting tasks to your CSP while ensuring you're focusing on the areas that your business is actually accountable for.

This helps to create a much more coordinated cloud-security approach while keeping your resource costs in check by removing redundant security workloads.

Prioritizing IAM and Data Protection

Infrastructure is replaceable, but your business reputation isn’t. By implementing the SRM effectively, you can start shifting your focus away from hardware configurations to data risk management. 

This includes implementing strict access controls such as Identity Access Management (IAM), encrypting your data in transit and at rest, and developing safer access policies for your internal administrators and external users.

Leveraging Inherited Infrastructure Security

When you leverage the SRM effectively, you’re able to start building your security protocols on a much stronger foundation. You’re able to understand and leverage the CSP-provided security elements while making them even more effective when combined with your own internal initiatives. 

Driving Secure-by-Design Configurations

Cloud platforms are full of adjustable security parameters. If you don't understand them, misconfigurations can create long-term problems. 

The SRM guides you toward a "security first" mindset, prioritizing standards over speed. It ensures that when you spin up a new virtual machine, it adheres to certain security prerequisites before it ever goes live.

Another way to create more security-by-design cloud configurations is by hiring third-party penetration testing services that can customize their assessments in alignment with certain SRM mandates.

Gaining Insight Through Activity Monitoring

Since both parties have a role to play in cloud security, the SRM naturally improves visibility into how well security measures are working. It encourages the use of cloud-native tools to monitor your cybersecurity posture in real time, enabling better planning and more efficient processes when recovering from a major breach.

Ultimately, the collective effort between CSPs and businesses that SRM helps to facilitate leads to more thorough security strategizing and helps to reduce the frequency of security incidents

Start Committing to Stronger Cloud Security Practices

As your business grows and relies more on cloud technology, the Shared Responsibility Model should be a critical element of your security planning. 

Understanding exactly where your duties begin and end helps prevent dangerous assumptions, allows you to take better ownership of your customer data's integrity, and enables you to build more sustainable relationships with your CSPs.