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Cyber Resilience In AWS

Evolving world and heightened digitalization pave the way for increased focus on cybersecurity. It’s tempting to use cloud services for data transmission, storage, and analysis. However, that also means a sharply increasing demand for cloud-native visibility. AWS offers many tools to help companies with their concerns and develop excellent cyber resilience.

Cyber resilience includes establishing an effective and robust architectural, operational, and technological strategy. Therefore, businesses must incorporate the best AWS tools and tips for optimal assembly, execution, and maintenance.

If you’re interested in learning how to boost your firm’s cyber resilience using AWS best practices, you’re in the right spot. Below we discuss the critical cybersecurity challenges, top-notch tips for cyber resilience using AWS, and more. So, let’s begin!

AWS To The Rescue

AWS- also referred to as Amazon Web Services- is a cloud service provider- and a personal favorite for several businesses today. It’s one of the best IaaS providers handling data, use cases, and even compliance requirements. It primarily works to manage and eliminate threats to the business community- from intense weather events to cyberattacks and maleficent breaches.

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Noteworthy AWS Cybersecurity Challenges

Big data and cloud computing mean more complexities- most of which companies usually struggle to comprehend. Luckily, they can now use and upgrade on AWS to secure their data, customers, and operations. However, that requires businesses to understand their challenges and use appropriate AWS tools to overcome them.

Are you confused about the critical cybersecurity risks that your firm may face? Here are a few major ones:

Cloud’s Inadequate Security Visibility

The lack of security visibility is a massive concern, considering there are several cloud apps with even more different logins and controls. That makes knowing who is accessing the platforms at what time almost impossible. AWS works to improve security visibility in several ways. Apart from the logs, it also works with HIDS (host-based intrusion detection). It helps you gain better insight into pre, during, and post-attack details. 

Understanding What Attracts Attackers To Cloud

If you don’t know the appealing feature for attackers, you may be unable to increase its cyber resilience. AWS offers strategies to secure your data and credentials promptly- two of the most sensitive elements targeted by breachers. It implements logging services at the host level, supervises anomalous logins, and uses AWS Secrets Manager or Hashicorp Vault for credential rotation.

Defense In Multi-Tenant Infrastructures

We often read how multi-tenancy means increased cyber risk. Though, that depends on how well-structured and secure your infrastructure is. But when immature procedures are incorporated to monitor virtual systems, vulnerabilities increase. AWS assists you in benchmarking your security maturity and enhances operations for several components, including networking, infrastructure control planes, runtimes, and system access.

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Is Climate Change Affecting Cyber Resilience Plans?

Climate change and cyber resiliency are often discussed in the same sentence – and it’s not wrong to do so. Today, nothing is left immune to the side effects of climate change and global supply chains. Developing scalable and flexible IT frameworks and accomplishing operational resilience aren’t the only concerns businesses have.

Climate change is also bound to boost political and social disruption, resulting in more cybercrime and attacks. Cyberthreats are not a worry for the future. Instead, they’re contemporary issues that require prompt action.

Admittedly, understanding cybersecurity to up the cyber resilience isn’t easy. Businesses must first understand their standing within the ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance) spectrum. And then evaluate their virtual and physical footprints (including cloud computing services and third parties).

This calls for optimal innovation to make the non-digital systems as safe as possible and build redundancies. However, recovery and backup procedures are just the tip of the iceberg. Ultimately, it all sums up to using promising technologies that best suit each firm’s supply chain and footprint.

That enables maximum and customized leadership, governance, ESG, and crisis management, assisting businesses in catering to climate change risks and building resilient digital frameworks. AWS is an impressive platform that allows this to happen by developing strategies and systems effectively.

Best Strategies For Cyber Resilience Using AWS

Defining Objectives

Before transferring data and systems to AWS, businesses must avoid all obstacles and disruptions. That means jotting down a comprehensive plan with well-defined continuity objectives. You can include questions related to the application aspects required for availability levels, mission-critical workloads, problems to solve when shifting to AWS, and workloads with lower business impacts even if they’re unavailable for a long time. Answering these elements makes you more strategic and act more efficiently when creating a backup, testing, and application availability.

Workload With Several Availability Zones

Cyber resilience is best possible when you create a geographically-balanced infrastructure. Having a physical outage in one location with nationwide workloads ensures a constant user experience. You can keep your default location as a single Availability Zone and assign another version of AWS to run in a different zone to route traffic to both locations. You can even employ application load balancers to direct incoming traffic between AZs to enhance physical and cyber resilience.

Developing Incidence Management Process

Your business infrastructure may be robust, but an absence of a sound incidence management procedure can be problematic when outages occur. So, you must have your IT personnel conduct efficient recovery protocols. Before that, don’t forget to define team responsibilities, order of operations, and documentation of the whole procedure for future references. Routine outage testing does wonders to tighten your incidence management procedure and recovery plans.

Data Backup

Another crucial tip for developing cyber resilience is prioritizing data backup. Backups aren’t only important when you face failed infrastructure. They’re also essential for outages related to cybersecurity breaches and human errors. Regular backups help you avoid untimely and hefty data losses. You can use Amazon EBS Snapshots or Amazon Simple Storage Services (Amazon S3) to maximize your backup’s durability.

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Our Final Thoughts

Data security and cyber resilience are crucial aspects of modern business operations. At first glance, they may sound intimidating- and can be challenging. However, a clear understanding of cyberthreats and the available AWS environment can help companies avail of the benefits AWS promises.

Above, we offered some of the best AWS practices to help you accomplish cyber resilience. Hopefully, you made notes and will implement them right away. Though, here’s a tip: know that AWS targets operational resiliency. Eventually, as the company, you are responsible for configuration and architecture. And successful cyber resilience includes working on these three elements simultaneously to achieve the best possible results.

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