The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has highlighted the need for public-private partnerships to address the growing risks to cloud identity systems.
In a blog post CISA posted Tuesday, Clayton Romans, associate director of CISA’s Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative, said that while cloud providers have implemented security measures, nation-state-affiliated actors have exploited vulnerabilities in token authentication, key management and logging practices.
To mitigate the risks, cloud service providers are advised to harden authentication and authorization mechanisms, prioritizing improvements in token technology, secrets management, access control, logging and forensic capabilities. Enhancing security in token validation technology, secrets management systems and logging practices, however, presents complex challenges, Romans said.
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Cloud Providers Gathered to Discuss Identity Security Practices
The JCDC is working with cloud service providers to address the challenges, including through the discussion of best practices for strengthening cloud identity security.
In June, CISA hosted the JCDC Cloud Identity Security Technical Exchange, during which 50 experts across the U.S. federal government and top cloud service providers analyzed core cloud identity security practices. The attendees included representatives from Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, HashiCorp, IBM, Microsoft, Okta, Oracle, Wiz, the OpenID Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Security Agency.
According to Romans, the exchange laid the foundation on how the agency can work with the private sector to improve the adoption of essential cloud identity security practices and enhance the resilience of critical cloud infrastructure.
