How to Implement Scalable AWS Security Without the Overhead

Guest post by Tim Armstrong, Product Team, Threat Stack, AWS Cloud Security Technology Partner

Traditionally, companies have had to choose between speed and security.

But times are changing and organizations running in AWS can now take advantage of continuous development practices and security without impacting delivery speed. How? Here are three practical ways to start implementing security for scale:

Integrate Security from the Ground Up

Traditionally, security has been an afterthought. But backpedaling security into existing processes, applications, and environments causes headaches and inefficiency. Instead, integrate security as early as possible by prioritizing visibility into who is doing what, where and when to know exactly what is happening across your AWS environment.

Gaining visibility across your AWS environment is fast and easy when you use a solution that is built for AWS. Threat Stack’s cloud-native platform deploys across an organization’s entire AWS environment in minutes, providing visibility that scales as you grow. This makes security visibility manageable even for the smallest of teams.

Honor the AWS Shared Responsibility Model

Security in the cloud starts with understanding where your cloud provider’s responsibilities end and yours begin. The AWS Shared Responsibility Model makes these distinctions:

Security of the Cloud: AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud itself.

Security in the Cloud: You’re responsible for implementing security in the cloud.

Some of the best practices for achieving security in the cloud, include:

• Focus on protecting the workload
• Use easy-to-deploy security tools
• Make sure your solution is cloud-native

Auto-Scale Security

Security should grow with you, and with minimal intervention. This is especially necessary for agile startups that lack security personnel. It’s important to select a security solution that can auto-scale, meaning that the solutions can grow with you in the cloud and can auto-deploy coverage as new servers spin up, monitoring any number of users and networks.

When embedded in the cloud as early as possible, security can scale seamlessly. Check out Threat Stack to learn more about getting started with securing your AWS environment.