Managing Security Across Hybrid Networks – A Pragmatic Approach

Managing network security for the cloud requires a very different mindset, tools and skills to managing network security for physical networks. Although some of the basic security principles remain the same, moving to the cloud takes you into entirely virtualized networks, controlled by software and APIs. They don’t provide the same visibility as physical networks and they change faster and far more frequently than physical networks. So while things may look the same on the outside, they function very differently on the inside.

Moving everything to the cloud and building your cloud environment from scratch can be a long, complicated and expensive process. This is why hybrid – a mix of in-house and off-premise resources – has become a hugely popular solution. In fact, recent Gartner research found that nearly half of large enterprises will have deployed a hybrid cloud by the end of 2017. However, hybrid does carry its own challenges and risks, in terms of management and security, both in your data center and in the cloud, since each side uses different configurations and security controls. You are mediating between two very different environments, and problems that occur in one can cross over to the other.

So when should you consider a hybrid cloud deployment?  And what are the key issues surrounding security when going hybrid?  In conjunction with information security research and analysis firm Securosis, we recently produced a white paper on security for cloud and hybrid networks.  The paper is a great primer on how to pragmatically manage both pure cloud as well as hybrid cloud networks, covering:

• An introduction to cloud computing and hybrid networks
• Cloud networking 101
• Network security controls
• Building your cloud network security program
• Design examples

You can download your copy of the white paper here.