Mandiant has published a new white paper, "Standardizing Privileged Access Architecture for Multi-Cloud," which addresses the growing security challenges in the age of multi-cloud adoption. The expansion of attack surfaces beyond traditional on-premises environments, coupled with complex permission structures and the prevalence of overly permissive accounts, has created fertile ground for sophisticated cyberattacks.
The white paper highlights the critical risks associated with multi-cloud environments and provides a practical framework for establishing a robust security posture. It delves into the intricacies of managing disparate cloud identities, roles, and access control models, highlighting the vulnerabilities that arise from misconfigurations and fragmented security practices.
To counter these evolving threats, Mandiant introduces a cloud-agnostic tiered security model revolving around the following controls to protect privileged access to critical assets in the cloud:
* Resource tiering within cloud platforms
* Limiting lateral movement through credential tiering
* Enforcing strict access controls through a zero-trust approach
* Applying scalable security configurations and governance for all resources
* Consistent monitoring and analytics practices
The paper discusses an architecture for cloud-agnostic tiering and how it will help protect a hybrid multi-cloud environment from various modern cyberattacks. By implementing the proactive measures outlined in this paper, organizations can effectively mitigate risks associated with a hybrid multi-cloud environment, limit paths of lateral movement, and protect their critical assets in the dynamic multi-cloud landscape.
For organizations exploring multi-cloud deployments and those attempting to secure their current cloud resources, this paper serves as vital guidance to harden their environment against cloud-based attacks.
