Cloud security is becoming a major security posture concern. A 2022 survey by the Cloud Security Alliance reveals that 67 percent of organizations are using public cloud environments to store sensitive data and 89 percent admit that they are not confident in their ability to secure their sensitive data in the cloud.
With all these, there’s a group that is getting spotlighted in the cloud security discussion: the software developers. The people responsible for the creation of apps and other kinds of software are seen as the key to cloud security.
This may sound out of the blue, given the common perception that developers rarely bother about keeping the security of their apps is unlikely to be a priority. However, it’s high time to examine the role developers play that can significantly impact cloud security.
Cloud adoption and security implications
Conventionally, developers build the apps, while the IT teams build the infrastructure necessary to run the apps and the security team ascertains that the apps and infrastructure are protected from threats and attacks. In other words, developers need to create software following the restrictions that come with the infrastructure and operating system they are working with. The security team then checks vulnerabilities in the resulting software. If there are issues found, remediation is undertaken, which may entail considerable rework.
The greater adoption of cloud solutions is changing the ways security works. Now, with modern cloud solutions, the cloud is not just third-party storage or host for apps. It can serve as the actual platform for building and running applications. Solutions like Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Amazon Web Services allow developers to program the creation and management of their cloud infrastructure as a vital part of their applications. Developers get to design their cloud architecture and make security configurations.
This new paradigm highlights the massive importance of cloud security and the role developers play in it. The creators of apps have a hand in building their cloud architecture and establishing security rules, which likely need to be changed every so often in response to emerging threats.
The need for developers to be security conscious
The cloud has created opportunities for organizations to become more innovative and competitive. The ability to create multifunction apps that link to other services and build a community of global users provides businesses with boundless potential to offer new kinds of products and business models. However, it also comes with daunting security challenges.
For one, the cloud expands the attack surface of organizations significantly. The use of the public cloud environment, in particular, is giving threat actors a field day. Poorly secured cloud ingress ports, for example, allow hackers to access sensitive data in the cloud and disrupt workloads. The cloud increases the risk of getting infected by malicious software, account takeovers, zero-day attacks, and other serious threats.
To keep up with the cyber threats, it is no longer viable to focus on strengthening the security team. They can only do so much, especially in the face of security alert fatigue because of overwhelming data generated by the use of multiple security controls. There is a need to enlist the help of the developers themselves.
Developers have the power to secure their code before their apps are deployed. Also, when building and running software through the cloud, developers have the ability to maintain and secure their apps while running. They know and understand their apps at a level nobody else does, so they are in the best position to introduce fixes, function or feature modifications, and policy changes to ensure that apps and the data in them are properly protected.
How developers help address key cloud security challenges
Renowned IT security expert Josh Stella, an advisor to the US intelligence community, believes that organizations should learn to make developers a part of cloud security. “Organizations that embrace a developer-first approach to cloud security will innovate faster and more securely than their competitors,” Stella stresses.
To better understand the role developers can play in cloud security, here’s a rundown of the salient points.
Who are the developers? – Developers can be app creators, cloud engineers, and cloud security engineers. As app developers, they can leverage native cloud services to make their apps more secure or to reduce risks. Cloud engineers deal with infrastructure-as-a-code (IaC) as they work on infrastructure configurations, deployment, and the management of cloud environments. Meanwhile, cloud security engineers have the expertise in policy-as-a-code (PaC). They formulate and implement security and compliance policies used by applications. They also provide security-focused PaC libraries.
The rise of the DevSecOps model – According to an IDC report, more developers are set to become responsible for the performance and security of their code once it has been deployed and running. The move towards DevSecOps is inevitable as more organizations embrace the cloud and realize the viability of a developer-first approach in security.
Misconfiguration: the leading threat – Misconfiguration is one of if not the biggest threats to cloud security. This is not limited to single-resource configuration issues that are typically associated with cloud breaches. It can also be the misconfiguration of the entire cloud environment, which leads to architectural weaknesses that allow threat actors to discover vulnerabilities, penetrate security controls, undertake lateral movements, and extract data. The silver lining: all of these can be addressed by developers.
API threats – APIs remove the need for a centralized data center and fixed IT infrastructure to run apps, making them one of the drivers of cloud computing. This is largely an advantage, but APIs also contribute to the increase of attack surfaces. Developers build APIs, and it is well within their abilities to ensure that they are free from vulnerabilities.
Prevention is better than cure – It is generally too late to halt an attack when it is already underway. A control plane compromise attack will wreak havoc on cloud resources if it is not detected and prevented promptly. In the cloud environment, developers are in the best position to design and undertake preventive measures. They can instill security into the full cloud software development life cycle to detect misconfigurations before cybercriminals discover them.
In conclusion
The cloud is completely software-defined, so developers have expertise over it. They know how to achieve cloud security because they are involved in almost everything in the cloud. They are responsible not only for creating applications but also for establishing the infrastructure for apps on the cloud. It is only logical for them to become a vital part in ensuring cloud security.
Also Read: Digital adoption platforms: How they can help developers write efficient codes for your organization
