How To Secure A Hybrid IT Infrastructure

Proper security in A Hybrid IT Infrastructure

As companies grow and expand, the corporate industry now demands agility and flexibility without the troubles of maintaining on-site data centers. They are slowly shifting to cloud solutions.

This is where a hybrid IT infrastructure comes in. A hybrid IT infrastructure is a combination of on-site data centers and a cloud. Enterprise systems and applications can be done through a mix of these environments depending on the business needs and desired outcome. Yes, it can be customized.

Top IT companies in the Philippines will have to agree that one of the prime targets for cyberattacks is these infrastructure’s servers and data centers. Where there is innovation, there is also a risk. That’s why it’s important to have a good grasp of the key security factors when it comes to networks, infrastructures, data, and hybrid cloud. When you learn how to protect your hybrid IT infrastructure effectively, you can increase your company’s continuity and maximize profitability.

Why Do You Need to Protect Your Business’ Hybrid Infrastructure?

For a hybrid infrastructure to effectively keep your company data secure, you must build its defenses properly. While storage service vendors offer protection to the underlying infrastructure, the end-users also have a shared responsibility of ensuring the security of their data in the cloud. The best way is to implement access control regulations and standards.

Just like every other technology, a hybrid IT infrastructure also faces security threats. Some of the prevailing threats that have been plaguing these infrastructures across organizations are business email compromise attacks, data breaches, and ransomware. It’s highly recommended by IT professionals that you enforce hybrid infrastructure security practices to protect your company’s physical machines and networks and meet your organization’s security needs.

Hybrid Infrastructure Security Challenges and Solutions

If you want to optimize your experience as you make use of this innovation, you have to know how to overcome these security challenges.

The common security challenges and solutions will be discussed to maximize your hybrid infrastructure as you enjoy the business advantages that it offers.

“Good IT infrastructure visibility and control are necessary to implement systems successfully.”

1. Control and Visibility

One of the prevalent security challenges that business owners face today as they make use of hybrid infrastructures is the trouble of controlling and monitoring IT systems effectively. As you can see, these infrastructures are more complex than traditional physical and virtual technologies. That’s why a lot of organizations find it difficult to view and control the distributed systems at present.

Good IT infrastructure visibility and control are necessary to implement systems successfully. The best way that you can achieve this is through automation. When you automate your business processes, you will be able to acquire repeatability and simplify the sharing and verification procedure of security audits. Aside from that, it’s also helpful to use security and management tools that are based on open standards. Through this, you will be able to find the people and tools necessary to get things done with ease.

2. Compliance and Management

When cloud technology was first introduced to the public, many business owners were skeptical of its security. In fact, some companies outright banned the technology and a few others leveraged it for noncritical tasks and data alone. This unfortunate turn of events delayed the development of hybrid IT infrastructure. Because of that, cloud technology still has a lot of unaddressed security challenges in spite of the fact that this technology has existed for some time.

In the present time, there are still some organizations that manually check whether they are compliant with security baselines or not. This has made the auditing process prone to errors and security issues. To solve this problem, experts recommend that you automate the scanning and remediation of your business security controls. You can make use of open-source tools to ensure that your business’ hybrid IT infrastructure is compliant and manageable.

3. Information Security

Data security has always been a challenge for business organizations, especially for those that installed hybrid-cloud technologies in their business premises. The company information stored in cloud environments tends to be exposed to risk at transit and rest. Hence, IT professionals see to it that their hybrid IT infrastructure data security is strong and reliable. One way to achieve this is through the utilization of data encryption. Once you practice this, you won’t just empower your business to protect your data at rest, you will also be able to safeguard those that are in motion as well.

4. Supply Chain Security

Apart from the ones mentioned above, it’s also critical that you know where the hardware and software your company came from. When you have a transparent supply chain, you will be able to have the confidence that the products you’re using are made securely.

More often than not, reputed vendors make sure that the technologies they’re offering meet the security standards established by the business world. That’s why it’s always ideal to turn to suppliers that are well-known in the industry. Furthermore, knowing your suppliers can also be a great help in picking the right managed service provider for your company. While you get the peace of mind that your providers are continuously offering updated fixes for security vulnerabilities, you also get the assurance that the IT systems handed out to you passed extensive QA/QE testing.

Best Practices to Ensure Your Hybrid-Cloud Infrastructure’s Security

As mentioned, the security of this IT infrastructure is a shared responsibility. Hence, you must be well aware of the best security practices observed by its users. In this portion of the blog, these practices will be discussed in detail to help you enhance your company’s hybrid IT infrastructure security. Regardless if you’re using the public, private, or hybrid cloud in your company, experts claim that these practices enlisted below have been a great help to numerous organizations:

1. Enforcement of the Least Privilege Principle

As you make use of cloud platforms in your organization, you should see to it that you enforce the least privilege principle. This principle covers the specification of the minimum business resource access needed by every employee. Business owners can execute this principle effectively by letting enterprise administrators classify whether certain employees should be permitted or not to access secretive business resources. Aside from that, they can also create criteria based on various factors to make this process easier.

2. Implementation of the Strong Privacy Policy Standards

One thing that you should remember when you save confidential content online is the implementation of the right privacy standards. In this case, you must enforce the renowned strong privacy policy standards in your off-premise IT architecture.

Once you practice this, you will be able to prevent the occurrences of core data leakages in your hybrid IT infrastructure. Through this, you’ll be able to keep your company data safe while you safeguard your company’s reputation.

3. 24/7 Encryption of the Algorithms Used

As was established earlier, digital information should be encrypted regardless if it’s in transmit mode or at rest. That way, you’ll be able to have the peace of mind that your company information is safe from security breaches. Other than that, it’s also essential that you make use of encryption algorithms that is effective 24/7. By doing this, you’ll be able to protect your company information and foster a productive working environment for your employees.

4. Redundancy of Critical and Non-Critical Data

Another security practice recommended by IT experts is data redundancy. Many organizations today that practice data redundancy makes use of it as their last line of defense. According to their expertise, this should be done for both critical and non-critical company information.

Every wise business owner knows that IT security attacks or system failures are inevitable. Even so, the effects of these security attacks—whether permanent or temporary—can only be determined by how you deal with them. When you create a backup for your data, you will be able to recover from these cybersecurity attacks easily. Hence, it’s ideal to regularly backup your data on a secure secondary storage location.

5. Choose the Right Security Solution for your Company

If you want to enjoy a hybrid IT infrastructure that’s secure, then you must look into which security solution will work best for your organization. As you can see, there are a lot of cloud security solutions business owners can choose from in the market. With the help of experts from reputed managed service providers like House of IT, you’ll be able to determine the right one that can help enhance your business operations. Their expertise in the field of information technology will help you create well-informed decisions as you make use of IT systems in your business.