Infrastructure As Code Best Practices

 Development and deployment cycles are running at faster rates than ever before. Through continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD), businesses are able to create and implement applications at a rapid rate. While this is driving innovation, it is also creating new challenges. The faster ideas are traveling through the CI/CD pipeline, the less time there is to address emerging security concerns. This is why Infrastructure as Code Security (IaC) is becoming an increasingly important part of DevOps. Learn more about IaC and how you can leverage it to improve security without having to slow the pace of growth.

Security Best Practices for IaC

You can take full advantage of IaC and improve security by implementing these best practices:

1- Continuous compliance. The best way to ensure compliance is to create clear standards for each stop along the pipeline. Continually reassessing compliance throughout the process according to predetermined rules is an excellent first step toward improved security. This will also allow you to test code against identified threats in a sandbox environment before fully implementing changes.

2- Least privilege principle. To make the process easier, usually DevOps engineers have a master account connecting to the cloud provider and provisioning all the resources with that master account. While this is a fast and easy approach, it is not the most secure approach. The recommendation is to have a set of different accounts with various Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) in place. These allow you to run the IaC code with a minimum privilege access mindset.

3- Monitor and update cloud security and compliance tests. It is also important to address security at the cloud environment level. This should include constant risk assessment and threat modeling. As new users are added and changes are made, you should continue to adjust access control and update firewalls.

4- Keeping secrets in a vault. While connecting to a cloud provider, you need secrets for the initial authentication and accessing resources. These secrets should be kept in a vault for maximum security and all the vault communication should be encrypted as well. Also, you should think about the rotation of secrets to prevent exposing them in the long run.

5- Require encryption. With modern encryption tools, there is no reason not to encrypt all data that is transmitted in the cloud. This is an essential tool that will protect sensitive data and add a layer of protection.

6- Automate alerts. There tool that will update your model repository as the IT and security communities learn about new threats. In addition, AI can be used to identify any abnormalities and automatically trigger alerts. These are important tools that incorporate security into the everyday flow of CI/CD.

7- Staging environments. It is highly recommended to have separate environments for development, QA and Production. Keep in mind, IaC always starts from the development environment and then goes to QA and production. Never deploy something to higher environments while you were not testing that in lower environments.

8- Remove the manual access to the cloud portal. In higher environments (QA, Prod) if developers and DevOps engineers have access to manually change the configurations, you could see configuration drifts from the IaC templates down the line. Always remove individual contributor access to higher environments and just give your developers the Read permission to validate resources manually. If they need to change something, it should go through the IaC process.

IaC provides businesses with the potential to accelerate DevOps and continuously update and improve applications without skipping a beat. This sort of fast-paced environment inevitably creates new security concerns, but there are existing tools and techniques that will allow you to take advantage of IaC while also addressing and reducing security risks. With the right security plan in place, you can confidently use IaC and remain flexible, scalable, and safe.

For additional help designing and implementing an IaC security plan, contact the experts at prancer.

Cloud Security Testing

In many cases, a cyber attack is only successful if a user takes a certain action, including clicking on a malicious link or entering information into a cloned website. However, with drive-by cyber attacks, malware is spread by targeting websites with security vulnerabilities and without requiring any action on the part of the user. This makes drive-by attacks an especially problematic and insidious type of hack and threat to cloud security. Keep reading to learn more about how this type of cyber attack works and what you can do to prevent your website from being targeted.

Hackers can only initiate a drive-by attack if the website is insecure. They will look for gaps in cloud security that will allow them to insert malicious scripts into the website code. This script can be used to automatically download malware onto the computer of a visitor to the site or redirect visitors to an alternative site that has been created by the hackers. Either way, both the website and the users are victims.

Drive-by downloads are also dangerous because they aren’t limited to website pages. They can also be triggered when a user views an email or looks at a pop-up window. Any app, web browser or operating system can be hijacked and used by the hacker.

How to Prevent Drive-By Attacks

For businesses and website owners, the best way to prevent drive-by cyber attacks is to make sure that your security, browser, and operating systems are up to date. It can be all too easy to forget about updates or fail to double-check that updates were successful, which can create just the sort of security vulnerabilities that make drive-by attacks possible. Be sure to not only schedule updates but make sure to review them to ensure compliance.

In addition, businesses should make sure to remove outdated aspects of the website. As you update or add new software, older tools should be removed. If they are left on the site and not updated with emerging security patches, you have created an easy way to exploit the site. Even if these components are not in use, they can still be used by hackers to insert malware.

It should go without saying that secure passwords are also at the heart of preventing cyber attacks, but some businesses still fail to enforce strong password use. A password generator and management tool can go a long way in supporting cloud security and preventing hackers from guessing weak passwords and easily gaining access to website code.

Finally, be aware of the types of advertisements that your users are being served. While publishing ads on your site can be a great way to generate passive income, this is also a common path for malware. Take the time to monitor the ads that are being shown on your site and make sure that your users aren’t being targeted with ad-based drive-by attacks.

Users should also make sure that browsers and operating systems are running the latest versions. In addition, they should minimize the number of apps and programs on your devices. The more programs you have running, the more likely you are to be the target of a drive-by attack. Pop-up blockers can also be an effective tool to reduce the risk of drive-by cyber attacks.

While drive-by cyber attacks are difficult to identify and prevent, there are steps that both businesses and users can take to reduce the risk of becoming a victim of this type of attack. For more information about different types of cyberattacks, how to prevent them, and ways to ensure compliance, contact the experts at prance . We help businesses across all industries improve cloud security and compliance in ways that also support the DevOps pipeline.