In an increasingly dangerous threat landscape where attackers are devising novel ways to infiltrate into company's secure IT infrastructure, organizations need to adopt latest technological methods to assure application security. Follow DoubleHorn updates on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/doublehorn-communications DoubleHorn is a leading cloud based Managed Services Provider, founded in January 2005 and based in Austin, TX. We specialize in delivering Cloud Services, Managed Communications and Consulting to the Enterprise, Government and SME (Small and Medium Enterprise) sectors. If you are new to the cloud and not sure how to get started, contact us for a complimentary initial assessment at solutions@doublehorn.com or (855) 61-VOICE.

1. Managing Application Security in the Cloud
Part 2/3 of Blog Series on Cloud Security Part 1
In the previous blog we discussed at length about the various challenges faced by applications
operating in the cloud and in this blog today, we will try to understand how to manage
application security in the cloud.
Several organizations today make use of in-house software applications to execute important
business processes, deliver advanced services to customers and to conduct business transactions
with various suppliers. In the wake of these important transactions being made, it is of prime
importance to secure these applications. In an increasingly dangerous threat landscape where
attackers are devising novel ways to infiltrate into company's secure IT infrastructure,
organizations need to adopt latest technological methods to assure application security. The
various steps you need to adopt in combating application breaches include
Assess your Risk Profile: The primary step is to assess how vulnerable your application is to
external as well as internal threats. Having a comprehensive security intelligence solution in
place that can continuously monitor enterprise environment and put vulnerabilities in context and
maintain a regular surveillance and assessment of your risk posture is strongly recommended.
Safeguard your Data: It is a well known fact that data security is an ongoing process and
maintaining a tab on flow of data, monitoring the resources accessing and modifying data,
enforcing strict policies regarding data access is very critical. Monitoring data activity provides
increased visibility into access of data, irrespective of the data located on big-data platforms, or
in the form of unstructured or structured databases. This step can ensure improvement of data
security in both on premise and cloud environments.

2. Track the User Access: Along with verifying user identities, you need to control access to data
based on what the users are accessing and also in what context are they accessing it. One of the
best solution that can help you in this regard is the adoption of federated identity management
solutions that can authenticate user access to Software-as-a Service (SaaS) applications and
cloud applications.
Integrate Application Security in SDLC: It is very important and in this increasingly
threatening attack landscape, it is imperative to incorporate application security into software
development life cycle. Attackers are exploiting the vulnerabilities in applications to download
malware onto user endpoints. Constant scanning of applications for vulnerabilities and making
them an integral part of development would go a long way in maintaining a secure environment.
Protect your applications against Fraud and Threats: In a cloud environment, integrated
threat protection continues to remain an important aspect and enterprises need to strive to prevent
applications from threats and frauds. Attackers are always looking out to infiltrate secure
networks and access important databases thereby resulting in fraud. In order to mitigate these
threats and prevent fraud, your enterprise needs to use a combination of security analytics, threat
intelligence and security products to effectively combat the attackers and secure data
In the next blog we will discuss how application security needs to be started at a code level and
various other ways to improve application security over the cloud.
DoubleHorn offers a complimentary Cloud assessment and helps you understand the level of
security Cloud offers to your IT infrastructure. Contact us to get started with the Cloud
assessment.