Leveraging cloud computing provides a strategic opportunity for many organizations and IT teams to deliver access everywhere, reduce costs, improve efficiency, and speed innovation. But the same ease of scale for applications and endpoints in the cloud also creates challenges. Controlling, maintaining and securing your organization’s cloud endpoints can be foggy without the right level of visibility.
What is a cloud endpoint?
Cloud, cloud management and cloud endpoints can encompass multiple things. This information is targeted specifically at endpoints in the cloud that have an operating system. A cloud endpoint with an operating system can and should be management equal to enterprise endpoints. Without this same level of management, you could be leaving a vulnerability exposed to exploit.
Knowing and managing the cloud endpoints accessing your network are essential to network and endpoint security. But visibility and control of endpoints are increasingly challenging. Hybrid work models, growing numbers of IoT and remote devices, and the dynamic nature of cloud environments can change the forecast for your endpoint security strategy from clear to murky.
Endpoints are prime targets for breach attempts. Attackers know where to look for vulnerabilities that are easily exploitable and not easily secured. Gain an advantage by understanding the possible roadblocks to endpoint security in the cloud, and taking a proactive approach.
Cloud realities for endpoint security
Be aware of obstacles you could encounter with your cloud endpoint security efforts. This awareness can add clarity to your security strategy for endpoints, including those in cloud environments.
- Existing point solutions for security, compliance and asset management won’t necessarily work seamlessly with cloud endpoints. This can slow down your security and ops teams and lead to risky holes in visibility and delayed remediation.
- Migrating to the cloud is not a one-time activity. It is a recurring, rapid process that makes visibility hard to maintain—especially if existing tools can’t keep up or are too expensive to maintain.
- Using multiple point solutions can introduce complexity that requires more resources and skills than your team has available. Cloud adoption often highlights missing security management and control skills within a team.
- Manual tracking is inefficient and problematic. It may have been a valid option in a traditional network perimeter, but is not feasible in a modern perimeter that includes cloud.
- Cloud sprawl is real, and cloud endpoints need to be managed just like enterprise endpoints. Without visibility and control of endpoints wherever they may be, the risk of a security breach increases.
Clearing the path to better cloud endpoint security
It’s nearly impossible to fully account for all endpoints (including roaming endpoints) within your enterprise and across multiple cloud providers without using a specialized cloud endpoint security tool. A variety of solutions can aid with managing the reach of your expanding enterprise network and solve many cloud migration challenges.
When selecting an endpoint management and control solution, consider looking for the following capabilities to help you leverage cloud benefits securely with speed and flexibility across mixed environments:
- Visibility and control of endpoints wherever they are
- Visibility of unmanaged devices such as routers, switches and IoT devices
- Discovery of endpoints to keep your inventory current
- Distribution, management and reporting for system patches and software updates
- Threat detection and remediation to secure any cloud vulnerabilities
- Compliance and data privacy for cloud endpoints
The right endpoint management solution can help you know your network, reduce costs and gain seamless management across multiple environments. Sirius partners with Tanium to help our clients improve IT hygiene, optimize costs, and secure cloud endpoints.
The Sirius White Glove Trial for Tanium as a Service provides guided assistance from Sirius Security experts to determine if a unified endpoint management and security platform is the right step for your cloud migration journey. To get started, reach out to your Sirius representative or contact us today.
