Mitigating Human Error to Preventing Cloud Security Vulnerabilities

In our previous blog post, we discussed how the human factor is the greatest security vulnerability, highlighting various examples of companies that have suffered greatly and have had their systems exposed to bad actors because of the human factor within their security systems.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss various steps for us to mitigate human error to prevent cloud security vulnerabilities.

The people, process, and technology framework for everything innovation is still very much valid in regards to it being the strength and weakness of innovation. No part of this tri-fold framework is independent of each other. What this means is that to ensure that one part works optimally, we must also look at the other parts–kind of like Professor Jay Forrester’s concept of System Dynamics, which, according to Wikipedia, is “an approach to understanding the nonlinear behaviour of complex systems…”.

Systems Dynamics & Cloud Security
In systems dynamics, a system is defined as a collection of components that continuously interact over time to make a unified whole. A typical systems dynamics study focuses on understanding how the components of a system interact with each other; how and why the dynamics of concern are formed; and how policies and decisions affect the system performance as a unit. System dynamics uses a causal-loop diagram to capture the factors affecting the behaviour of the system. The connection between the system and its operating environment, and feedback loops among the components within the system are depicted in the causal-loop diagram.

Indeed, to ensure the quality of your cloud security platform, you must look at the nonlinear relationship of all three actors (components) involved in your cloud security system–which are the people, processes, and technology. How and why the dynamics of concern among our three main components are formed, and how cloud security policies are followed by the people who use these systems, with the various security solutions and how the decision to adhere to these policies affect the system.

Cloud Security System components

In general, there are about 5 components of cloud security that work together to ensure the whole system is secured against threats. These components are: 1. Architecture Security Exposure Management 2. Architecture Visibility & Monitoring 3. Enforcing Security Compliance & Prevention Controls 4. Threat Detection 5. Response & Authentication Protocol.

These five security components are all incorporated within the larger system component of people, process, and technology, as architecture security and exposure management leverages on cloud security solutions and technologies; architecture visibility and monitoring leverages the technology to monitor, and the process of monitoring set by the people (users); enforcing security compliance and prevention controls leverages the technology and people to enforce security compliance and the prevention processes put in place. Threat detection leverages technology completely; while response and authentication protocol leverages all three major system components.

Wendu & Mitigating Human Error
The entire discussion of the systems dynamics of cloud security vulnerabilities is to get us to understand that we need all three major system components within the security framework to address one or more of the components.

To mitigate human errors, we need to also address the process and technology being used. Our SaaS solution, Wendu, enables security teams, developers and management to collaborate, take ownership, and become accountable in terms of security. Wendu is very useful in improving the security of your cloud estate and reducing the human factor that is the greatest security vulnerability.

Wendu addresses all five security components discussed in this blog post with a range of services that compasses from IAM and external exposure management for your secure architecture & exposure management; Idle resource exposure for your architecture visibility & monitoring; Tag Management for your enforcing security compliance & prevention controls; well architected exposure for your threat detection; and our revolutionary SecFinOps operations for your response & authentication protocolling.