When you look at security technologies there’s a heavy emphasis on protecting Windows systems, which makes sense if you are thinking only about protecting workstation end points. But in the cloud, the dominant OS is Linux – even in Microsoft’s Azure. In fact, surveys report the web server market share is 70% Linux and 90% of the public cloud workload is run on Linux.
It’s so easy to spin up a default instance of a Linux distro in the cloud and start using it. But that is so dangerous. Especially as that is repeated over and over again.
Many organizations are just beginning to recognize the growing security problems of:
- cloud VM sprawl – this is especially problematic because of the potential for tenant sprawl. Where many different teams at one organization use a credit card to open separate tenant accounts and spin up VMs and other cloud resources within.
- ephemeral VMs – with increased orchestration and automation, organizations are increasingly instantiating VMs that only live for hours or days – but they still handle important data and are quickly found and attacked by the bad guys
- insecure containers in Kubernetes environments – containers aren’t VMs but they are still deeply rooted in Linux security and the stakes are even higher since they run on the same instance of an OS
In this real-training-for-free event, we will delve into the most important things to do for securing Linux-based workloads in the cloud including:
- root and other local accounts
- implementing least privilege
- tying local actions to corporate identities
- remote admin access
- network
- services and daemons
- patch management
- logging
In particular, we will examine security issues and strategies shared between on-prem and cloud Linux and highlight important differences. Just one example is, in an on-prem environment you can assume that communication with other components of the overall environment take place on an internal private network. But in the cloud that takes extra effort to accomplish and is often neglected.
Our sponsor is BeyondTrust, and they have been enhancing Linux security and integrating with AD for decades. Patrick Schneider will join me and briefly show you how BeyondTrust’s Linux Cloud Security solutions can increase visibility, provide more granular controls, and better align with modern security guidelines and compliance mandates.
Please join us for this real training for free Session.