As application architectures evolve to accommodate current trends and technologies, the security model needs to evolve with them. The developer and operations teams need to think about securing various aspects of the application lifecycle. Organizations should consider the following security paradigms:
Physical security – this includes security of the datacenter that houses the application infrastructure, and controlled access to the racks and switches.
Network security – this includes access to the organization’s networking via secure VPN tunnels, presence of firewalls for access to specific ports, network micro-segmentation, traffic isolation, partitioned LANs, DDoS attacks, intrusion detection and elimination, security of private gateway connecting on-premises and public cloud components.
Logical Access security – things includes role-based access control, hierarchical Active Directory structure, control privileged access.
Data security – this includes encryption capability, data integrity and backup, data classification, persistent protection, controlled sharing.
Application security – this includes authentication rules, authorization rules, session management, role-based access, limiting exposure of functions (via API), latest version of binaries, latest patches applied to the underlying platform, limit direct access to the database, exception handling, logging and auditing, SSL certificates.
There is no panacea for protecting your application or the data within it – it is an ongoing process. All aspects of security require constant reviews and updates. But by following a combination industry best practices and strategies to secure the access to the application and the content within, IT teams can rest easy that their business critical applications will be available when their users want them.
Keyva can provide a holistic assessment of your current security state, and recommendations towards a future steady state. Are you interested in learning more about how various organizations are achieving security for their applications and data? If so, please reach out to one of our associates and we’d be glad to talk with you about our experiences.