Need to Strengthen Your Virtual Private Cloud's Data Security? Here are Some Ways

It is a concept and a cloud resource-sharing technique that resides as a private and isolated cloud segment with the public cloud. In other words, it can provide security and operations like a private cloud while crowded within the public cloud's environment. You can consider the public cloud as your hostel and the Virtual Private Cloud as your private room where only you are staying. 

VPC is gaining widespread recognition at an enterprise level. According to Market Research Future's expectation, the global VPC market will grow to $50 Billion by 2023 at a CAGR of 26% from the previous 23% in 2017.

Enterprises can enjoy cloud services at a low cost because of the public cloud while leveraging the benefits like low cost, high data security, on-demand dynamic scaling, zero downtime and no additional maintenance. 

Like other cloud strategies, VPCs are also highly configurable. All major cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, IBM, Vmware, Alibaba, Google, Rackspace, Oracle, Nerdio, HPE OneSphere, and others, allow VPC. 

Learn more about Cloud Data Security from Coursera. 

Virtual Private Cloud = Features and Expanses of Public Cloud + Data Isolation of Private Cloud

Creating a VPC architecture requires multiple cloud resources. We can organize it similarly to a home computing system, the only exception being that a VPC resides in the cloud. 

Here is a list of cloud resources that helps make a virtual cloud:

• Logical Instance: It helps in data communication with the cloud. Such an instance is also called networking. It lets the cloud's end-users access the cloud-hosted apps, sites, and tools that are there as a part of the VPC.
• VSI: A Virtual Server Instance (VSI) comes with memory capabilities and processing power that helps to compute resources.
• Storage: To prepare a VPC, we also require storage resources by appending Solid-State Drive (SSDs) and Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) to store various data to the VPC architecture. There is a possibility to increase or decrease the storage based on necessity.

Explore the course on VPC Networking Fundamentals from Coursera.

Recent data privacy and security incidents have put data security in focus. A latest report by IT Governance revealed 1,243 security incidents in 2021, which amounts to approximately 5,126,930,507 breached records. Major outlets like Domino's, Facebook and Upstox reported that millions of users’ data was stolen. 

Each of these data breaches costs a company ₹14 Crores on an average. That is why organizations have become more vigilant about data security. To learn how to create a VPC, check out Coursera's course on AWS VPC. 

This section will discuss different best practices to strengthen the VPC data security:

Security Through Traffic Control

For bolstering the preliminary security postures, one should leverage security software like Squid, Sophos, etc., to limit the use of unnecessary URLs, links, and malicious domains. 

Such security tools permit all traffic to go through the regulated proxy tier. Using such tools, organizations can control the threatening links and malicious sites from accessing the VPC environment.

Incorporating Firewalls

Organizations can implement packet-filtering firewalls or Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) to close and secure various ports of VPC from illegitimate data packets. 

Packet filtering firewalls can block ports, IP addresses, and deprecated or insecure network traffic protocols. Thus, firewalls can help prevent unsolicited traffic or data packets from entering; hence, preserving data security within the VPC environment.

Continuous Security Monitoring of your VPC

Another significant way of securing your VPC is through continuous security monitoring of VPC components. Various continuous monitoring tools, like Amazon CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, etc., can help ensure the security of the VPC perimeter. 

Role-based Access Control (RBAC) is another approach that comes with modern identity management tools to protect VPC authentication and access control for safeguarding the data automatically.

Create a Data Recovery Plan

In case of a data breach by ransomware or wiper malware, it is essential to have a backup of your data in some other cloud storage. If all data gets wiped out or erased, companies can retrieve or recover it from the backup.

Organizations should sketch a proper plan about the techniques and technologies to use as a part of data recovery. For learning more about cloud data security, check out Coursera's Cloud Security Engineer Professional Certificate.

Use VPC Flow Logs for Logging Traffic 

VPC Flow Logs are another security feature that organizations can implement in their VPC to capture information about the IP traffic that is going to and from network interfaces within the VPC. Flow logs do several tasks like:

• Monitoring network traffic reaching your instance
• Diagnosing security group rules
• Determining the direction of traffic and its authenticity across network interfaces

Flow logs can help in checking whether any malicious program or packet is trying to corrupt or pollute the data residing within the VPC or not.

Use IAM Access Control Policies

Almost all cloud providers provide Identity and Access Management (IAM) features that allow organizations to manage all user identities, restrict unwanted users and secure the resources residing within its limit. 

Through IAM, organizations can create granular levels of permission and cater to sophisticated privilege access management options available for the VPC's data security.