Strengthening Cloud Defense: The Shared Responsibility Model

Above: Illustration by itchaznong/123rf.com

Deciding to migrate to the cloud is a big step forward for businesses. For most organizations, the benefits are obvious – they get the ability to scale their resources whenever they need while keeping their operations more agile to stay competitive.

But there is a catch to benefiting from this flexibility. The rapid pace of cloud adoption and the digital footprint it creates can create many grey areas for security.

Often, businesses struggle to determine where their security responsibilities end and their cloud service provider’s (CSP) begin. This can cause confusion and missed opportunities to harden both cloud-based and on-premises systems effectively.

One of the worst assumptions you can make when starting your own cloud migration is that any security accountabilities you currently have in your business automatically transfer to your CSP. This is where the Shared Responsibility Model (SRM) comes in.

What is SRM, how does it work, and how you can use it to help strengthen your cloud defenses as you scale.

Understanding the Shared Responsibility Model

Working with CSPs can be really beneficial to growing businesses. It allows you to hand off many of the time-consuming tasks associated with infrastructure management and application provisioning.

This helps avoid unnecessary administrative burden on internal teams, lowers operational costs, and frees up bandwidth for more critical tasks.

However, what many businesses fail to realize is that even though you may be offloading many data management tasks over to a CSP, this doesn’t necessarily mean you’re offloading security and data privacy risks as well. The SRM exists to help remove this assumption and clarify where accountabilities rest between your business and the cloud providers you use.

The SRM serves as a roadmap for splitting security obligations between the CSP and you, the customer. It maps out specific control planes and assigns responsibility for deploying and managing the privacy protocols and security configurations.

Distinguishing security “Of” versus security “In” the Cloud

One of the things that the SRM does really well is to help break down where and how cloud security accountabilities rest. To do this, the model is built around two key concepts: Security “of” the cloud and Security “in” the cloud.

Security “OF” the cloud references a CSP’s obligations. An easy way to think about this is to consider a property management company for an apartment complex. The management team is responsible for ensuring the building’s safety and structural integrity. This might include installing security gates at the perimeter, ensuring plumbing and electrical systems are in good order, and ensuring tenants have access to utilities.

This applies to CSPs’ positioning in the SRM. They are responsible for physical data centers and the networking hardware. They also manage the host operating systems and the virtualization layer required to run different cloud deployments.

Security “in” the cloud references your responsibilities as a cloud customer. Going back to that apartment analogy – if a tenant leaves their front door wide open and their television gets stolen, the property manager isn’t at fault. The manager still secured the building, but you failed to follow best practices to help keep your assets safe.

In the cloud, this means you are responsible for managing user access, data encryption, and security best practices.

How Shared Responsibility enhances security posture

Clarifies ownership and accountability

Clarity is essential in security planning. Every business process, whether it’s managed in-house or hosted in the cloud, still needs to have dedicated ownership to keep accountability where it belongs.

Adopting an SRM helps eliminate confusion about who is responsible for specific controls. It allows you to set up strict governance policies both internally and in your relationship with the CSP. Taking this approach ensures that no vulnerabilities are missed and that security gaps are addressed as needed.

Optimizes security resource allocation

When your internal teams know exactly what responsibilities your CSP handles, they can stop wasting cycles on problems that aren’t theirs to solve.

You can then delegate the heavy lifting of physical security and infrastructure stability to the provider, where it belongs. This frees up your security engineers to focus on high-value tasks that are unique to your business.

They can spend their time securing proprietary code, refining identity management controls, and monitoring network traffic for potential anomalies that need to be addressed.

Reduces configuration vulnerabilities

When your business aligns with SRM principles and adheres to compliance frameworks such as HITRUST and NIST, it builds a foundation that is inherently more secure. CSPs design their services to meet their side of the agreement, and you’re able to leverage advanced protections that are often baked right into the platforms you use.

Leveraging this type of integration is a major advantage to your business. It lowers the threat of major cyber attacks disrupting your business, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) or ransomware attacks. It also ensures your network architecture includes built-in disaster recovery and failover capabilities.

Drives a security-centric operational approach

Cloud platforms are powerful, but they are also incredibly complex. If you don’t understand how to set them up properly, you can easily end up with misconfigurations that leave data exposed.

The SRM forces organizations to put secure configuration ahead of rapid deployment. It encourages a culture where compliance standards dictate how fast you innovate.

It also gives you clear guidelines you can follow to help get more value from your security auditing. For example, penetration testers can simulate attacks on your cloud environments, using the SRM to verify that your Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies or data handling procedures are actually working and compliant.

Make cloud security a critical focus for your business

As your business scales into the cloud, integrating the Shared Responsibility Model into your operational DNA is vital for long-term success.

By acknowledging and accepting your specific duties within the cloud ecosystem, you get rid of dangerous blind spots. This perspective helps empower you to move from passively relying on your vendors to taking a proactive, hands-on role in defending your digital assets.

Nazy Fouladirad

About the author

Nazy Fouladirad is President and COO of Tevora, a global leading cybersecurity consultancy. She has dedicated her career to creating a more secure business and online environment for organizations across the country and world. She is passionate about serving her community and acts as a board member for a local nonprofit organization.