NC1801

TECHNOLOGYUPDATE
THE CLOUD GENERATION FIREWALL
A MOVE TO THE CLOUD CAN PROVIDE A RANGE
OF BENEFITS - BUT WHAT ABOUT SECURITY?
CHRIS HILL DIRECTOR OF BARRACUDA
NETWORKS EXPLAINS WHY ACTION IS NEEDED
Traditionally, the daily operation of
securing an organisation's network was
orchestrated by a firewall located
exclusively on premise. However, in the
cloud era, these rigid, monolithic and
hardware-centric firewall architectures,
designed for centralised networks can't keep
up with the increasingly sophisticated
threat landscape.
In the last year breaches have continued to
become more rampant. Deloitte and Equifax
suffered and WannaCry highlighted that
large scale attacks can happen any time.
According to a recent survey we conducted,
50 per cent of respondents confirmed they
had suffered a cyber-attack.
The same survey revealed that more than
40 per cent of respondents organisations
are operating some of their infrastructure in
the public cloud. But as we inch closer to
the cloud era, it's concerning that many
making that move are still using traditional
legacy firewalls to secure their cloud
workloads and applications. They're simply
not engineered with the cloud's elasticity,
scalability or the consumption model that
businesses want and they won't defend
against modern cyber-attacks.
To protect and manage cloud data a more
robust cloud-scale security platform is
required. It must provide a capability that
satisfies the most demanding cloud specific
use-cases without the overhead of legacy on
premise architectures.
This being said the cloud doesn't
necessarily require a totally different tool
set, as long as you understand the cloud
environment applications are deployed in
and the native services the IaaS provider
offers to build security control coverage.
From here controls can be implemented
to leverage chosen best practice.
In terms of application development, it's no
secret that security is one of the most
challenging aspects. However we're seeing a
demand from the DevOps community in
particular to automate security controls into the
Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery
(CI/CD) process. This allows security controls to
be pushed deeper into the deployment process.
Cloud security platforms also need to include
the REST API framework used by developers to
automate application tests and integrate
security directly into the code building process.
Arguably, deploying a firewall in the cloud
comes down to having the right tools. Any
security controls need to cover and leverage
the agility and elasticity of the cloud
infrastructure.
Organisations need a cloud generation
firewall but how does this differ from legacy
firewalls? It helps users to leverage cloud native
management and monitoring tools, allowing
businesses to take advantage of cloud-native
architectures for the automated deployment
and scaling needed in the cloud era. It also
offers businesses that all important API
integration, allowing the use of traditional agile
development tools within the cloud
environment while providing consumption
based pricing to support business flexibility.
With this flexibility organisations can costeffectively
deploy security at critical points in the
cloud in addition to hybrid or multi-cloud
environments and importantly throughout the
development lifecycle. Cloud generation
firewalls fulfil these needs by protecting an
organisation's entire infrastructure, whether it be
on premise, in the public cloud or distributed
across both.
As a result, there's no chance for any security
gaps due to horizontal functionality, so whether
you're migrating workflows or moving data
storage, the firewall will rise wherever it's
needed. Ultimately, migrating to the cloud
means shifting how you think about security
and it's important to review the security
technology stack before migrating.
Instead of struggling to control all network
traffic, organisations should focus on protecting
each application and workload with an
appropriate level of security. This means
deploying security in alignment with your
current cloud consumption model and
leveraging tools that allow you to build security
controls into the development and deployment
process.
When these requirements are met,
organisations can migrate to the cloud
successfully and without compromising their
security posture. NC
26 NETWORKcomputing JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 @NCMagAndAwards
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