You Don't Control Your Cloud. Does Your Incident Response Plan Acknowledge That?
For years, organizations have meticulously crafted incident response (IR) playbooks. When an incident occurred in the data center, the steps were clear: isolate the server, preserve the disk image, analyze the logs. This on-premise model gave security teams a sense of control. In the cloud, that control is an illusion, and your old playbook is obsolete.
The very nature of the cloud—its flexibility, shared responsibility, and dynamic architecture—creates unique and complex challenges for incident response. Many organizations have simply not adapted, with one-third of leaders stating that cloud adoption has actually increased their cybersecurity risk. The assumption that traditional IR procedures will work in a cloud environment is a critical, and potentially catastrophic, strategic error.
To effectively manage a security incident in the cloud, leaders must fundamentally rethink their approach. It requires a new strategy that begins long before an attack ever happens, shifting focus from assets to identities and from manual reaction to automated response.
The New Foundation: Response Starts with a Contract, Not a Crisis
The most critical phase of cloud incident response does not happen in a war room; it happens during vendor procurement and contract negotiation. In a shared responsibility model, your ability to respond to an incident is dictated by the terms you agree to with your Cloud Service Provider (CSP). What is not explicitly defined in your contract will not be covered in a crisis.
Therefore, your legal and governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) teams are now essential members of your incident response capability. Before engaging any CSP, leaders must ensure contracts provide for the necessary support and visibility. Key considerations include:
| Readiness Element | Description |
|---|---|
| Logging and Data Access | Will the CSP provide the advanced logging required for a forensic investigation, or is it an extra cost? You must contractually require access to the forensic artifacts needed to investigate an incident. |
| Defined Responsibilities | The contract must clearly delineate who is responsible for what during an incident. In a breach of the CSP's own infrastructure, their role is to notify you and scope the impact. In a breach of your tenant within their cloud, you are responsible for acting, but you will need their support. |
| Communication Channels and SLAs | The contract should establish clear communication channels and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for victim notification. Relying blindly on a CSP for timely and transparent communication during a crisis is a failing strategy. |
Modernizing Your Approach: Four Critical Shifts
While contracts build the foundation, your internal security operations must also evolve. This requires four strategic shifts in mindset and capability.
| Cloud Security Focus | Description |
|---|---|
| 1. Shift From Assets to Identities | In the cloud, monitoring individual servers is no longer effective. The environment is too dynamic. The focus must shift to monitoring identities, entitlements, and activities. With outsiders gaining unauthorized access being the primary concern for 71% of organizations in cloud incidents, controlling data access through identity is paramount. Your security team must be able to answer: "Is this user allowed to do this, from this location, at this time?" This identity-first approach allows you to spot abnormal behaviors even when attackers use legitimate, stolen credentials. |
| 2. Make Automation a Core Element | The speed and scale of cloud threats make manual incident response processes dangerously slow. Automation must be leveraged as a core element to save time and resources. Mature cloud platforms allow for automated data collection, correlation, and even initial containment actions. Automating these repetitive tasks frees up your expert analysts to focus on the most complex parts of the investigation, reducing the overall response time from weeks to days, or even hours. |
| 3. Upgrade Your Team's Skills | Your on-premise experts need new skills to be effective in the cloud. The 2023 Cloud Security Governance Survey revealed that a primary reason for difficulty is insufficient knowledge of the cloud environment. Your team must be proficient in areas like digital forensics within cloud environments, securing third-party APIs, and using cloud-native security tools. |
| 4. Redefine "Resilience" | Executive leaders have rightly adopted a "when, not if" mentality regarding breaches. The ultimate goal is no longer just prevention; it is business resilience. In a cloud context, this means your business continuity and disaster recovery plans must be fully synchronized with your CSPs. It may even include sourcing strategies like multi-cloud redundancies to avoid being crippled by an outage at a single provider. |
Navigating the New Reality
Responding to an incident in the cloud is a test of strategy, preparation, and partnership. It requires a proactive approach that integrates legal, procurement, and security functions long before a crisis hits. Building this modern capability internally is a significant challenge for any organization.
This is where strategic guidance is essential. AKATI Sekurity’s Security Consulting and Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) services specialize in helping businesses navigate this exact transformation. We work with you to review CSP contracts, develop cloud-specific incident response playbooks, conduct tabletop exercises, and build the resilient, modern security posture your organization requires.
To ensure your incident response strategy is ready for the realities of the cloud, contact AKATI Sekurity for a strategic consultation.
