I’ve always been a fan of applications that integrate with all (or some) of the other tools and services I use. It’s like a superpower that, when activated, creates something that is larger than the sum of its parts. Now, instead of a single tool that does one thing well, it’s a collection of tools that each work together in harmony to solve problems faster, easier and more transparently — like a digital Swiss Army knife.
When it comes to cloud security, these benefits are especially pronounced, as the amount of overhead required to manage the security of a cloud native organization is already incredibly high. As a cloud native company, you are inherently putting your trust in companies with potentially complex configuration systems that can expose you to a security incident with only an errant keystroke.
Cloud security tools that integrate into your technology ecosystem allow you to better manage your security in a more automated fashion while also simplifying the process and keeping you more informed — all within the context of a single pane of glass.
Increased Productivity
One of the most obvious benefits of using technology integrations in your cloud security practice is increased productivity through automation. For example, auto-remediation is the process of automatically fixing security issues as they are detected. In the context of a single-purpose security tool, this is already valuable.
Find a vulnerability? Patch it. Simple enough, right?
Now, think about auto-remediation in the context of a fully integrated cloud security solution. Instead of being able to solve only one kind of problem, you now have the potential to automatically remediate issues that exist outside the purview of any one tool. This could be something as simple as automatically applying security policies to AWS S3 buckets or as complex as automatically applying specific network settings to instances in your cloud infrastructure.
Reduced Cognitive Load
Almost as important as productivity, though, is usability. While you can likely manage the security of all of your cloud platforms in individual tools, this can quickly become overwhelming. Instead, seeking out a tool that meets you where you already are can reduce the barrier to entry while also creating a single pane of glass for managing the security of your cloud infrastructure.
Revisiting our example above, while you can manage the security of your S3 buckets directly within AWS, being able to handle it within a single security tool helps create a consistent configuration and design language that you and your team can rely on. The advantage of this usability language is that, as your ecosystem grows or changes, your understanding of how to manage it doesn’t need to.
Just like a well-designed code framework abstracts unnecessary complexities away, fully integrated cloud security tools can abstract away the nuances of each of the tools you use and instead give you a single, consistent pattern for securing them. This consistency makes management easy while also reducing the onboarding of new team members as well as the overall cognitive load of having to maintain multiple tools.
Enhanced Awareness
Being able to automate and manage your technology ecosystem through an integrated cloud security platform is valuable, but it is an incomplete solution without data. Just like managing the security of all of your tools is more efficient in a single pane of glass, understanding their current security status is also easier within a single dashboard.
While there are a number of different solutions for aggregating logs and other statistics into a single place, a fully-integrated solution takes those analytics and makes them immediately actionable. Now, instead of just knowing that you have misconfigured S3 buckets, you might be able to review which ones were automatically remediated and then manage those auto-remediation rules directly.
This transparency and control across all of your cloud tools will not only help you get your job done more efficiently, but will also help inform the way you think about your cloud security. The tools you use and how they interact with one another will become an important part of the decision process. And, as the infrastructure that powers our technology ecosystems gets more complex, it becomes increasingly important to view security through a holistic lens. There is no value in a security solution that isn’t capable of being taken into account as a piece of a whole.
Conclusion: Leveraging Technology Integrations to Improve Cloud Security Management
By integrating cloud security tools into a company’s technology system, a range of benefits can be achieved, including improved efficiency through automation, reduced cognitive strain and improved awareness. A unified interface for managing security across all cloud platforms allows for more streamlined protection of infrastructure and simplifies the process of onboarding new employees. Furthermore, fully integrated cloud security solutions offer actionable analytics and transparency, enabling users to review and manage security status and rules within a single interface. Using integrated cloud security tools can help companies effectively and efficiently secure their data and assets in the cloud.
