What is multi-cloud security: Challenges and best practices

When you run a business in an increasingly digital world, you can operate in any geographical location, gather comprehensive customer data, and access nearly infinite processing power. On the other hand, it becomes a challenge to access the right cloud hosting infrastructure, maintain organized workflows, and meet the customer’s expectation of 24/7 availability. 

In response, business owners are moving their workloads from on-premise servers to multiple public cloud services that better suit availability and on-demand performance. According to a 2023 report by Flexera, 87 percent of organizations now use a multi-cloud environment. 

Using more than one public cloud amplifies your data security risks; you need a solid multi-cloud security strategy to safely use this setup. So, what’s the reason for these security challenges? What are the best practices to run a multi-cloud environment? You’ll soon understand.

In full, here’s what you’ll learn:

• The benefits of a multi-cloud environment
• What is multi-cloud security?
• Security challenges of multi-cloud environments
• Best practices to implement multi-cloud security
• Final thoughts: Multi-cloud security challenges and best practices

The benefits of a multi-cloud environment

Using more than one cloud service provider has many advantages. Understanding them will give you an idea of whether this approach fits your priorities.

Access to the latest tools and technologies

When your cloud service provider doesn’t offer some of the technologies you need, you can choose an additional service provider to cover the technology gap, thus forming a multi-cloud environment.  

This allows you to capitalize on new tools and features that emerge. For example, Statista’s research shows that 39 percent of multi-cloud customers use it for machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities, both of which are rapidly growing fields in 2024.

Improved reliability

Using a multi-cloud environment eliminates the risk of a single point of failure. Even if one cloud service is down, your application can run on another provider’s infrastructure. When handled correctly, this sidesteps the losses associated with outages. 

Global reach

If your business relies on connecting to customers in remote locations, using a server located far away could slow down your application or website. In contrast, if you choose cloud providers based on geographical coverage, you’ll have more options for data centers close to your customer’s location, which improves data transfer speeds.   

Easier compliance

Some countries legally mandate that data centers serving their inhabitants should be located within the country. Businesses without global data centers can instead host data via cloud services within those countries.

Security

Multi-cloud environments support disaster recovery, especially since different cloud hosting vendors have their data centers in separate geographical locations. In that case, even if a disaster affects the region of one data center, your data stays secure in another location.

The multi-cloud environment approach has many benefits you won’t find in a solo private cloud, public cloud, or hybrid cloud. The only thing to consider is how to protect your infrastructure; for that, you’ll need multi-cloud security.

To design a comprehensive multi-cloud safety strategy, first understand the security challenges of using more than one public cloud service.

Security challenges of multi-cloud environments

Every cloud platform has limitations, so when you use multiple platforms, you take on each of their shortcomings. Let’s get into the details of how that leads to multi-cloud security challenges.

Cloud-specific security threats

When you store data and run applications in a remote cloud server that’s accessed through public networks, watch out for cyber threats like:

• Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
• Malicious users, whether insiders or outsiders.
• Malware attacks, including ransomware.

Cloud networks are a known target for hackers. For example, in October 2023, cutting-edge cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure reported a DDoS attack named HTTP/2 Rapid Reset. It exploited a vulnerability in the HTTP protocol to send an overwhelming 398 million requests per second.

Larger attack surface 

An attack surface consists of all the entry points through which a hacker can enter your network system. The more cloud platforms you use, the wider the attack surface because your data is susceptible to the security loopholes of each platform. Also, a cyberattack on one cloud platform could spread to other platforms through your network.  

Complex security configurations

Creating a solid cloud security posture is a challenge, even with a solo public cloud. In a multi-cloud environment, businesses must configure multiple cloud platforms with different architectures, security controls, and management tools.

Every cloud service provider has a different tech stack with different security measures implemented. You’ll have to see whether each security system is compatible with all providers — and create a workaround if it’s not. Moreover, creating user groups and configuring access controls across multiple cloud platforms is complex enough to lead to misconfigurations.

Managing patches for several environments

Cloud service providers release software updates to fight cyber threats. You’ll also receive updates for every program in your tech stack on each cloud environment. While it’s feasible to manage the updates for a single cloud, it can be overwhelming for your security team to handle multiple patches for several programs on different cloud platforms.

The risk is that missing a significant security update leaves you vulnerable to data breaches.

Lack of visibility across multiple cloud platforms

When you deploy apps in a multi-cloud environment, your data security is distributed across multiple service providers. It’s essential to monitor threat reports and security incidents in each of those cloud platforms. To do so, you may end up switching back and forth between the monitoring platforms for each environment, which is tedious and limits your overall visibility. 

In this case, you could fail to respond to a vulnerability alert in time, leading to a security gap or an attack.

Lack of skilled personnel 

According to NetApp’s 2023 State of CloudOps report, 85 percent of IT decision-makers feel that their team lacks cloud operation skills, and that has negatively affected their business. If you don’t have specialized employees to manage the complexities of multi-cloud architecture, it’s a risk.

Granted, hiring several cloud security experts will significantly increase the cost of your project. In contrast, a cloud service provider can offer you a fully managed hosting experience with monitoring handled for you. Going one step further, Liquid Web provides you with a hosting engineer who will consistently assess your cloud platform’s security to identify gaps.

Outlining the security challenges isn’t to discourage you from reaping the benefits of multiple cloud platforms. Now that you know the hurdles, you’ll understand how implementing the following best practices helps secure your multi-cloud environment. 

Best practices to implement multi-cloud security

While creating a strong multi-cloud security posture, following the best practices will help you deal with the complexities.

Consistent security policies across cloud platforms

Having ad hoc security policies for different cloud platforms could lead to confusion and chaos. For example, if you have differently named user groups and roles across cloud platforms, you might accidentally give a user unnecessary access privileges. In contrast, make an overarching policy on the privilege hierarchy and how to elevate a user’s privilege. 

Consider the multi-cloud environment as a single system; create consistent security protocols and workflows. Resultingly, you’ll have an easier time tracking and managing security decisions for each of your cloud environments.

Manage all your cloud environments from one place

A centralized logging and monitoring system eliminates the need to switch between multiple cloud platforms to check for incidents and updates.

The central monitoring dashboard will show you the overview of all the cloud platforms in one place, allowing you to supervise all your cloud operations in real time. It will also remind you about available updates and patches. 

Automate updates across cloud environments

Your cloud platforms should be up to date to get the highest performance out of them and avoid known threats. Set your programs to automatically install updates as soon as they’re available. This way, you’ll never miss an update, and you won’t worry about making time to check each program.

It’s also a good idea to automate important security tasks, like incident monitoring, across the multi-cloud environment. 

Use security tools from cloud service providers

Public cloud service providers typically offer an arsenal of security tools for threat detection and data loss prevention. They also have features for network security and data encryption. When choosing a cloud service provider, ensure they have the security tools that you need. 

For example, Liquid Web offers security tools like a secure firewall and DDoS protection to prevent attackers from breaching your network or flooding your infrastructure with malicious external requests.

Next, make sure your security team understands how to use each tool efficiently. Include these tools in your security workflows as you develop a multi-cloud security strategy. 

Understand the shared responsibility model 

Cloud service providers consider security as a shared responsibility between clients and the service provider. In this shared responsibility model, the service provider takes up responsibility for certain components of the cloud environment and then leaves the rest to the client.

For example, AWS is responsible for infrastructure security but its clients are responsible for identity and access management (IAM) along with data protection. Different cloud providers will have a different shared responsibility model. 

Implement user access controls

Since access and identity management will often be your team’s responsibility, it’s best you set up a solid IAM strategy for your multi-cloud environment. 

Zero standing privileges (ZSP) is a great paradigm that discourages you from allocating unnecessary power to users. In ZSP, each user has no privileges by default — only what’s necessary for their job. Resultingly, you prevent the misuse of access privileges and reduce the number of people whose accounts are powerful enough to be targeted by malicious actors.

ZSP is part of a broader security paradigm, the zero trust policy (ZTP), in which no user from inside or outside the enterprise network is assumed to be trustworthy.

Similarly, the just-in-time privileged access management (PAM) system allows the user to acquire just enough privilege to perform a task. PAM revokes the privilege soon after the user finishes the task.

Aside from those examples, there are many ways to implement user privilege management, such as one-time usage accounts or a broker system where the user requests for a privilege with a justification.

To bolster your user access controls, enforce security measures like:

• Mandatory strong passwords.
• Multi-factor authentication.
• Obsolete account removal. 

Implement DevSecOps

DevSecOps is a good practice to follow when creating secure apps. It combines DevOps, which is responsible for app design and development, with SecOps, which is responsible for security. DevSecOps focuses on incorporating security into every stage of app development. 

Final thoughts: Multi-cloud security challenges and best practices

Cybersecurity is a formidable challenge for businesses using multi-cloud environments. Researching, buying, installing, and configuring security for multiple cloud platforms is complex, but now you have a good sense of what to prioritize. You’ve also learned about cloud security posture management and the best practices for using multiple cloud platforms. 

The easiest way to expand your cloud infrastructure is with a fully managed, secure cloud platform; check out Liquid Web’s private cloud solution. It’s powered by VMware, featuring centralized management, horizontal web scaling, a secure firewall, DDoS protection, 24/7 tech support, a high-performing network, and lots of storage.