CLOUD SECURITY FUNDAMENTALS
Understanding cloud security
01
What is cloud security?
Cloud security keeps cloud-based apps, data, and infrastructure safe from data breaches and misuse in an evolving landscape of cyberthreats.
02
Why do you need cloud security?
As cloud adoption grows, so does exposure to new risks. Robust cloud security protects sensitive data, ensures compliance, and maintains customer trust.
03
How does cloud security work?
Effective cloud security combines zero trust architecture with AI-powered threat detection, identity management, and more to protect users and data in public and private clouds.
BENEFITS OF CLOUD SECURITY
Enhance security and accelerate transformation
Prevent breaches across cloud environments
Gain unified visibility, enforce strict access controls, and deploy adaptive defenses to reduce risk.
Streamline cloud migration
Simplify transitions with tools like CSPM and secure, agentless access to SaaS resources.
Ensure compliance and trust
Maintain regulatory standards with posture management solutions and continuous auditing.
Improve operational agility
Automate workflows and reduce complexity with a unified cloud security platform.
Zero Trust, from Theory to Practice
Start with the basic what, why, and how of zero trust, understand the finer points of the architecture, key use cases, and more as you prepare to deploy it in your environment.
SECURING MULTICLOUD ENVIRONMENTS
Leave firewalls behind. Achieve comprehensive, cloud native security—and inspect 100% of traffic—with Zscaler Zero Trust Cloud.
- Enforce comprehensive threat and data security consistently across multicloud environments
- Eliminate lateral movement and the attack surface with granular cloud workload segmentation
- Cut operational complexity and costs by eliminating firewalls, proxies, and private connectivity
Core capabilities of cloud security
Understanding key technologies
Provides visibility and control over cloud usage while enforcing policies across sanctioned and unsanctioned apps
Identifies and remediates excessive privileges in public cloud services to reduce risk
Minimizes sensitive data leaks across public and private clouds with unified, inline defenses
Protects data in cloud environments, both in transit and at rest, against unauthorized access
Identifies and mitigates endpoint threats, with enhanced protection for devices accessing the cloud
Manages and enforces permissions across clouds and apps to ensure secure, controlled access
Monitors cloud traffic for malicious activity and blocks potential cloud-based attacks.
Analyzes security logs in real time, increasing security teams’ visibility into cloud ecosystems
Enforces secure access to cloud applications by verifying user identities and device health, ensuring least-privilege access within zero trust architectures
TOP CLOUD SECURITY RISKS
The flexibility and scalability of the cloud unlock incredible possibilities, but they also open the way for new risks, from data breaches to service outages and more.
CLOUD SECURITY BEST PRACTICES
How to protect sensitive data in the cloud
Defending against modern threats requires a modern architecture and approach.
Implement a zero trust architecture
to verify every user, device, and request before granting access, and continually reassess permissions based on context. Learn more.
Deploy strong identity management,
including IAM and multifactor authentication (MFA), to enforce granular access controls and prevent unauthorized access.
Enforce least-privileged access,
granting users and applications the minimum access required, to reduce the impact of both malicious and accidental incidents.
Encrypt all data at rest and in motion
to protect sensitive data across your ecosystem from unauthorized access, data loss, and regulatory noncompliance.
Isolate workloads and data with microsegmentation
across your data centers, clouds, and VPCs/VNETs to restrict lateral movement in the event of a breach.
Maintain real-time visibility with continuous monitoring
across your cloud environments to help rapidly detect and respond to anomalies or emerging threats.
Automate security policy enforcement with
tools that can dynamically evaluate, recommend, and enforce consistent policies across your environment.
FAQS
Frequently Asked Questions
Common cloud security threats include:
- misconfigured resources
- data breaches
- unauthorized access
- insider threats
- insecure APIs
These risks can expose sensitive information or disrupt services, especially in hybrid or multicloud environments. Effectively addressing these challenges today requires a least-privileged access approach, continuous monitoring, comprehensive data loss prevention (DLP), and more.
Following its core tenet, “never trust, always verify,” zero trust improves cloud security by continuously verifying every user or device requesting access to a resource, whether or not that entity was already authenticated. This approach reduces unauthorized access, limits lateral movement, and ensures granular access controls, making it ideal for securing dynamic cloud environments.
Protecting cloud environments requires a combination of advanced security solutions designed for modern ecosystems. Tools like zero trust network access (ZTNA), cloud native firewalls, data protection platforms, and security posture management work together to provide secure access, protect sensitive data, identify threats, and help organizations maintain compliance across dynamic cloud ecosystems.
Encryption secures data by rendering it unreadable to unauthorized users, both in transit and at rest. In the cloud, encryption ensures that even if attackers intercept traffic or bypass security controls, the data remains inaccessible. Coupled with strong cryptographic key management, encryption plays a critical role in reducing breach risks and ensuring compliance.