Understanding Compliance In AWS Cloud
Cloud Compliance is one of the major concerns among all users. Enterprises using cloud storage or backup services have to make sure that they are following the best practices in Cloud to ensure that their businesses run smoothly. They have to make sure that they have a good knowledge about their data storage and backup and their infrastructure is compliant when in the cloud.
Issues pertaining to Cloud Compliance arise once enterprises start using the cloud storage or backup services. When their critical data is migrated from their internal storage to cloud, it becomes very important for them to observe closely how that data will be stored so that they remain compliant with laws and business regulations. When it comes to Cloud Compliance, enterprises have to think about what data they should move to the cloud and what they should keep in-house. These questions have to be answered by their cloud services providers and should be written into SLAs to maintain compliance.
Every now and then, AWS Compliance answers thousands of questions which users ask about how to accomplish and preserve compliance in the cloud. Among several other things, enterprises are keen to take advantages of the cost savings and safety at scale being offered by AWS while upholding strong security measures and regulatory compliance at the same time. Set of laws across industries and geographies can vary and also feel complex. Let’s see and analyze answers to some of the commonly asked questions asked about compliance in the AWS cloud. This will also help in clearing up possible mistaken beliefs regarding how operating in the cloud might affect compliance.
Nearly every guideline requires enterprises to sufficiently look after their substantial and informational assets. To do this, there is an implied or understood ability to organize and establish:
What type of information is stored on a system?
Where is the information stored?
Who has the right of entry to your system?
What they can access?
Is the access authorized?
All of these queries involve some level of rights of the possessions in question, and that is where Cloud Compliance issues turn out to be evident. In a public cloud environment, some of these questions can be answered with certainty however; some of them might pose a compliance problem. Let’s see some of them here:
Certifications and Attestations
Compliance certifications and attestations are the evidences that show that something is true. They are considered by a third-party, self-regulating auditor and result in a certification, audit report, or verification of compliance.
Laws and Regulations
Customers using cloud services remain accountable for complying with appropriate compliance laws and regulations. In some of the cases, AWS offers important features such as security features, enablers, and legal agreements such as the AWS Data Processing Agreement and Business Associate Agreement. These features help a lot in supporting customer compliance. It is also true that many requirements under applicable laws and regulations may not be liable to certification or attestation.
Alignments and Frameworks
Compliance alignments and frameworks involve available security or compliance requirements which have been published already for specific purposes. AWS offers important security features and enablers that include compliance playbooks, mapping documents, and whitepapers for these types of programs.
It is not necessary that all the requirements under specific alignments and frameworks need certification or attestation; nevertheless, some alignments and frameworks are covered by other compliance programs. For example, NIST guidelines can be mapped to appropriate FedRAMP security baselines.
To make sure that your business is fulfilling the necessities of Cloud Compliance, you need to know the areas you need to be aware of. The first thing that every enterprise needs to learn is the importance of thorough knowledge and understanding about the type of cloud services that they use. Once enterprises are fully aware about the offerings of their cloud services provider, they can look at the data that they are going to move to the cloud. For security and compliance reasons, it is better to keep some of the highly confidential data on an internal network and not move to the cloud. Or, if at all any data needs to be moved to a cloud infrastructure, it should be kept in a private cloud that is hosted on the premises. There, access to both the physical and logical infrastructure can be provided. To learn more about AWS Compliance, please read this AWS Blog post.
The second thing to understand for the enterprises is to decide which data they are going to put on the cloud and for that they need to look at the contracts with their cloud services provider. So, let’s consider that if it is going to be an internal cloud, is your enterprise going to have internal SLAs and internal compliance checklists? And if it’s external, you have to undoubtedly identify with your cloud provider what type of data should be kept in the cloud, how they’re going to look after them, how they’re going to back them up, and how you may have the right to audit the security and compliance framework that your cloud provider builds around your data.
Much of compliance is about ensuring proper controls that organizations need to have to get access to assets. Applying IAM Policies to achieve security compliance has also become a necessity. At the same time, it is important for them to know to what extent they can access their data and how it can be maintained. The best way to ensure all this is through audit. Botmetric gives you an extensive set of over 75 thorough audits to run on your cloud infra.
These audits are centralised around- Cost, Security, DR/Backup, and Performance. It regularly checks organization’s infrastructure and keeps it updated. Enterprises need to always remember that it’s their data and they are fully responsible for it; they have to remain in control at any given stage. They need to make sure that they classify their data. They need to understand that some of the data might not be suitable for the cloud. It requires to be kept internally. Enterprises should have the correct understanding and cooperation with the cloud provider settings. Finally, they should try to keep an incident response plan ready. Having an incident response plan will help them in facing any type of e-discovery and authorizations to get access to data stored on the cloud.
To understand how Botmetric is helping enterprises achieve compliance in the AWS Cloud, take up a 14-day free trial today. Check DR/Backup audits that you should run to achieve compliance in AWS Cloud. Run all the free intuitive audits and adhere the best practices to achieve maximum ROI from your cloud.
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