Infrastructure security can refer to both temporary assets like real estate and permanent ones like technology assets like computers, networking systems, and cloud resources, including both software and hardware.
Infrastructure security refers to safeguarding against calamities like natural disasters and other calamities in addition to traditional cyberattacks. It also addresses the subject of resilience, which takes into account how an organization bounces back from an attack or other disruption. The ultimate objective is to strengthen security measures and reduce the amount of downtime and related costs that businesses incur for customer attrition, brand and reputation loss, and compliance.
Infrastructure security is, at its core, a high-level way of considering the defense of the entire technological perimeter of the organization. Tactical security plans, such as how we will safeguard the information on our employees’ laptops, may be created as subsets of the overall strategy.
Infrastructure security, which includes critical infrastructure security, is essential for avoiding attack or disaster-related damage to technology assets and data. Additionally, it’s essential for reducing the amount of damage in the event of a successful attack or in the case of a disaster. Similarly to this, infrastructure security’s main objective is to reduce the overall risk level that the organization faces, which reduces the likelihood of serious operational disruption and financial impact on the company.
The various levels or categories of infrastructure security do not have a single, agreed-upon definition. However, in the enterprise, securing the following four levels is a common way to approach security:
Physical Level:
Infrastructure needs to be physically protected with things like fences, backup generators, locked doors, and security cameras. A physical security strategy may also include failover plans that place backup hardware somewhere else in the world.
Application Level:
Security must be taken into account at the application level as well. This covers both the hardening of other applications against unauthorized use or malicious exploits, as well as the defense of databases against attacks like SQL injections.
Data Level:
Data protection must be taken into account at the most fundamental level of infrastructure security, regardless of where or how it is kept. This covers data encryption, backups, and, when necessary, anonymization techniques.
Security guidelines for Infrastructure
Securing technology infrastructure has never been more crucial or complex due to increased interconnectivity, and increased adoption of cloud services, microservices, and software components across various cloud platforms, as well as at the edges of corporate networks. Using zero-trust security architectures is one strategy businesses are using to combat this issue. An identity and access management philosophy known as “zero trust” holds that no user or workload should ever be assumed to be trustworthy. All users, devices, and application instances must demonstrate their identity and right to access the resources they need in order to gain access.
A big part of safeguarding IT infrastructure is training staff members on password and credential security. Due to the relentless pace of intrusion attempts, the human element is frequently the weakest link in an organization’s security strategy, and even a brief and seemingly insignificant breach in the security perimeter can result in serious harm.
A strong and regular backup strategy offers an essential safety net for business continuity because new types of threats can appear at any time or disasters can have more devastating effects than expected. Enterprises should search for a data protection solution that ensures continuous availability through easy, quick recovery from disruptions, globally consistent operations, and seamless app and data mobility across multiple clouds as data volumes continue to increase.
Why Infrastructure Security is Important for AWS?
To improve privacy and regulate network access, AWS offers a number of security tools and services. These consist of:
- You can set up private networks and manage access to your instances or applications using network firewalls built into Amazon VPC. With TLS, customers have control over encryption in transit for all AWS services.
- Dedicated or private connections from your office or on-premises environment are made possible by connectivity options.
- DDoS mitigation techniques that work both at layer 7 and layer 3 or 4. These can be utilized as a part of delivery strategies for both applications and content.
- Between AWS-secured facilities, all traffic on the global and regional AWS networks is automatically encrypted.
