Given cloud technology's growing popularity and inevitability and its profound impact on Security Operations Centers (SOCs) operations, cloud security has long become an imperative factor in maximizing efficiency: Reports predict that SOCs will absorb cloud security by 2026.

But an immediate and complete migration to the cloud is not the only way to go: With the ability to address the challenges of traditional security approaches while leveraging the benefits of the cloud, hybrid cloud security is the right compromise for SOCs seeking to transform smoothly and mitigate the risks associated with maintaining and managing IT assets in both public and private clouds.

In this article, we'll explore the power of hybrid cloud security for SOCs and how it enhances their security operations. Let's dive right in.

Understanding hybrid cloud security

Hybrid cloud security involves implementing security measures to protect critical data, applications, and resources across both on-premises and private cloud environments. It ensures comprehensive protection and mitigates the risks associated with managing IT assets in a hybrid cloud setup.

The risks of traditional security approaches for SOCs

Before exploring the advantages of hybrid cloud security in more detail, it's essential to understand the risks associated with traditional security approaches that force you to choose between on-premises or cloud-based solutions for your alarm management.

Relying solely on on-premises security measures can lead to limitations in scalability. As the demands on SOC resources increase, you may need help to expand your infrastructure and handle the workload effectively. This can lead to resource bottlenecks and performance problems and, in turn, hinder efficient threat detection and response.

Relying exclusively on cloud-based security, however, can raise concerns about data sovereignty and control. SOCs may face legal or regulatory requirements that necessitate keeping sensitive data on-premises. Without the flexibility to decide where critical data is stored, SOC teams may compromise compliance and face heightened security risks.

The benefits of hybrid cloud security for efficient SOC alarm management

Hybrid cloud offers SOCs an approach that allows them to balance data security with the need for flexible and scalable alarm management solutions by leveraging a combination of on-premises and cloud-based security environments. By keeping your on-premises security backbone while using cloud services to accommodate specific sites or applications, you can enjoy the benefits of both technologies.

Choosing a hybrid cloud security solution lets you improve both your cyber security posture and streamline your physical security operations in several ways – let's have a look at the 5 main benefits:

Protect data and applications

The main objective of implementing a hybrid cloud-based alarm management solution is to effectively protect operational SOC applications and security data. The physical security aspects of data protection in a public cloud environment are usually the responsibility of third-party data center operators, who implement robust physical security measures such as access controls, surveillance systems, and redundancy mechanisms to protect the physical infrastructure that hosts the cloud services. By relying on specialized data centers, you can leverage the expertise and investments made by these providers in physical security, ensuring a secure hosting environment for your applications and data. Another benefit of data protection in a hybrid cloud environment is that SOCs can determine where to store critical security data: On-site or in the cloud. This way, they can keep sensitive information on-premises while leveraging cloud benefits such as scalability and agility for non-sensitive workloads.

Resilience through combined infrastructures

The ability to withstand outages and disruptions is critical to the SOC's resilience in physical security operations. As hybrid cloud security enables a mix of on-premises and cloud infrastructures, it creates redundancy and a resilient environment that can seamlessly adapt to changing circumstances. This allows SOC operators to switch between different settings in the event of an incident, reducing the risk of downtime, ensuring continuous protection, and ensuring the availability of physical security measures.

Monitor and detect security events

As you can integrate your on-site physical security systems with cloud services, a hybrid cloud deployment enables centralized alarm monitoring and management. This integration provides enhanced control and visibility, enabling operators to efficiently manage security measures such as adding surveillance cameras or access control readers at remote locations. By using hybrid cloud services, operators can also simplify the setup process when expanding to new locations and improve overall physical security monitoring and alarm management.

Simplify security operations

Centralizing security monitoring and incident response in both on-premises and cloud environments helps SOCs detect and respond to suspicious activity or security incidents more quickly and comprehensively while reducing alert fatigue and the risk of data breaches or unauthorized access. A hybrid cloud model provides operators with improved scalability for growing demands to effectively handle increased workloads. They can leverage the scalability and agility of the cloud to store and analyze large amounts of physical security data in the cloud. This storage capacity removes the limitations of on-premises infrastructure and enables SOC teams to store and access data more efficiently. The scalability of the cloud also allows for the storage and analysis of data from various physical security devices, such as video surveillance systems and access control systems, ensuring comprehensive insight into physical security events and trends.

Maintain regulatory compliance

By combining the computing resources of public cloud providers such as AWS or Microsoft Azure with an organization's private cloud or on-premises data center, you can optimize your security infrastructure while ensuring regulatory compliance. Automation and orchestration tools, for example, help SOCs simplify compliance management as they streamline routine tasks and improve response times. These tools can automatically collect and analyze audit logs, generate compliance reports, and track mitigation efforts. Managed security services by cloud providers can also help SOCs with compliance by providing a range of features such as centralized logging, continuous monitoring, and threat intelligence that can simplify compliance-related tasks.

Embracing hybrid cloud security in 4 steps

To harness the power of the hybrid cloud, your SOC team can follow a structured implementation approach that aligns with its unique requirements. To successfully embrace hybrid cloud security and unlock its full potential for alarm handling, here are 4 key steps to consider:

1. Workload identification:

Identify which workloads would benefit from cloud services and which need to remain on-premises. This involves understanding the sensitivity of the data, compliance requirements, and performance considerations.

2. Secure data transfer:

Establish secure channels for transferring data between on-premises and cloud environments. Encryption and other secure data transfer protocols should be implemented to maintain the confidentiality and integrity of information during transit.

3. Unified security management:

Managing physical security in a complex and dynamic landscape is challenging. One approach to centralized security management is leveraging hybrid SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) solutions and unified alarm management platforms. These solutions integrate with both on-premises and cloud-based security systems, allowing SOC teams to monitor and analyze security events from both on-premises sources and cloud environments at one glance. Aggregating security logs and events from various sources and providing a unified view of the security landscape empowers operators to detect and respond to threats more efficiently.

4. Partnering with trusted providers:

Work with trusted providers that offer hybrid cloud security solutions tailored to the specific needs of SOCs. These providers should be able to reassure you that they have robust security measures in place to protect data, so look out for certifications accredited throughout the industry! The right partner should also be able to help you assess requirements so you can choose the right mix of on-premises and cloud solutions and ensure seamless integration of your security measures.

Growing future-proof with hybrid cloud security

Security should always come first. As the digital landscape becomes increasingly complex, a certified security solution is essential to ensure better data protection while improving your SOC's overall security posture. One way to create more secure and agile security operations is to embrace the power of hybrid cloud security with a unified alarm management platform like evalink: It allows you to leverage your existing on-premises infrastructure while seamlessly integrating cloud services. evalink is designed with maximum flexibility in mind, helping you combine and integrate your physical infrastructure of legacy and on-premises systems with the benefits of the cloud.

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