Postmodern Security

At too many organizations, I’ve seen a dangerous pattern when trying to migrate to public Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) i.e. Cloud. It’s often approached like a colo or a data center hosting service and the result is eventual failure in the initiative due to massive cost overruns and terrible performance. Essentially, this can be attributed to inexperience on the side of the organization and a cloud provider business model based on consumption. The end result is usually layoffs and reorgs while senior leadership shakes its head, “But it worked for Netflix!”

Based on my experience with various public and hybrid cloud initiatives, I can offer the following advice.

1. Treat public cloud like an application platform, not traditional infrastructure. That means you should have reference models and Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) templates for the deployment of architecture and application components that have undergone security and peer reviews in advance. Practice “policy as code” by working with cloud engineers to build security requirements into IaC.
2. Use public cloud like an ephemeral ecosystem with immutable components. Translation: your “pets” don’t belong there, only cattle. Deploy resources to meet demand and establish expiration dates. Don’t attempt to migrate your monolithic application without significant refactoring to make it cloud-friendly. If you need to change a configuration or resize, then redeploy. Identify validation points in your cloud supply chain, where you can catch vulnerable systems/components prior to deploy, because it reduces your attack surface AND it’s cheaper. You should also have monitoring in place (AWS Config or a 3rd party app) that catches any deviation and  automatically remediates. You want cloud infrastructure that is standardized, secure and repeatable.
3. Become an expert in understanding the cost of services in public cloud. Remember, it’s a consumption model and the cloud provider isn’t going to lose any sleep over customers hemorrhaging money due to bad design.
4. Hybrid cloud doesn’t mean creating inefficient design patterns based on dependencies between public cloud and on-premise infrastructure. You don’t do this with traditional data centers, why would you do it with hybrid could?
5. Hire experienced automation engineers/developers to lead your cloud migration and train staff who believe in the initiative. Send the saboteurs home early on or you’ll have organizational chaos.

If software ate the world, it burped out the Cloud. If you don’t approach this initiative with the right architecture, processes and people, there aren’t enough fancy tools in the world to help you clean up the result: organizational indigestion.