Applying ABAC to Cloud Technologies

Brian Colaluca   ·   Wednesday, January 3rd, 2018

Is your business or agency preparing to migrate to cloud technologies in 2018? Or have you already adopted the cloud and are looking for ways to enhance cloud security and protect your company or agency resources? As organizations trend towards cloud environments, new challenges and opportunities arise. A significant challenge is how to protect your organization’s resources in an open cloud environment while still meeting stringent security requirements.

Even though strengthening data and network security is a primary focus for cloud providers, these efforts do not offer the same level of control and security as commonly found in internal corporate networks. In order to leverage the cloud, while keeping critical data secure, organizations need to be aware of a) how their data is shared and b) the organization needs to take the steps to audit and control access to sensitive information

However, an opportunity also arises here in being able to evaluate and rethink how your organization manages identity and access management (IdAM) while also ensuring that your cloud enterprise is prepared for the security challenges of the future. This Use Case, Federal Mission: Applying ABAC to Your Cloud Migration, is tailored for government agencies, who have some of the most burdensome security requirements. By using an Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) implementation, such as the Axiomatics Policy Server (APS), for your enterprise’s authorization, you can extend your existing cloud’s capabilities to provide dynamic and fine-grained access control.

Also discussed in this Use Case is the benefit of having a centralized authorization service performing the logging, monitoring, and alerting of all access control requests and decisions within your cloud environment. Security officers and auditors will benefit by having a specific location to which to plug in your enterprise Security Event Information Management (SIEM) system to monitor authorization permits and denies. This can also help play a role in Intrusion Detection requirements for the cloud.

To learn more, download our Use Case: Federal Mission: Applying ABAC to Your Cloud Migration.