Best Practices for Implementing Hybrid Cloud Security

Hybrid Cloud Security is a set of practices that must be considered when adopting hybrid cloud infrastructures. As hybrid cloud infrastructures gain popularity among developers due to their combination of on-premises security and scalability, they present both opportunities and challenges in terms of security.

While the hybrid model allows for flexible workload allocation and enhances operational efficiency, it also expands the attack surface and increases security complexities. Managing these hybrid environments requires a multi-layered security approach, with Identity and Access Management (IAM) serving as a key component. This article explores the security challenges of hybrid clouds and how tools like OPAL offer effective solutions through hybrid authorization.

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The Challenges of Hybrid Cloud Security

The hybrid cloud model, an increasingly popular deployment strategy, has two main benefits:
On one hand, it gives us the control and security of on-premises infrastructure. On the other, it gives us the scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency of public cloud services.

Sensitive data, legacy applications, or workloads with strict compliance requirements can be contained in a private data center or private cloud environment, enjoying the security of on-prem infrastructure while keeping the cloud deployment benefits of allocating workloads based on their specific needs - maximizing operational efficiency.

While the advantages of doing this are evident, the hybrid model also introduces some unique security challenges.

A hybrid model inherently expands potential attack surfaces, as it includes a wider range of components—on-premises, private cloud, and public cloud—each with potential vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit. Legacy and cloud-native applications also tend to have diverse security needs, making a unified security strategy difficult to implement.

Data mobility between on-prem and cloud environments increases the risk of interception and exfiltration, making it necessary to implement proper encryption and access control. On top of that, comprehensive visibility must be maintained across the distributed hybrid landscape since a decentralized, fragmented security system can make threats harder to detect, delaying a timely response.

These challenges mean developers must adopt a flexible, multi-layered security approach to handle a hybrid cloud system. Identity and Access Management (IAM), which serves as the gatekeeper of hybrid cloud environments, is a critical component of this multi-layered approach.

Let’s explore this further.

Understanding IAM Security and Authorization Challenges

Identity and Access Management (IAM) is one of the key security components of a hybrid cloud environment. It controls who can access which resources and under what conditions.

While hybrid infrastructures offer flexibility and scalability, their complexity and the dynamic nature of cloud environments pose unique challenges for IAM, specifically when it comes to authorization.

Adopting an "Identity Infrastructure as Code" strategy is a good approach to tackling these challenges. This involves defining and managing IAM configurations, such as user roles, permissions, and policies, as code that can be version-controlled, tested, and deployed automatically. By treating identity infrastructure as code, developers can significantly improve the IAM processes, reducing manual errors and ensuring consistent enforcement across the hybrid environment.

Key Benefits of Identity Infrastructure as Code

• Improved Agility: IAM changes can be implemented more quickly and efficiently following all the CI/CD best practices developers are already familiar with.
• Enhanced Security: Automated testing and validation of IAM configurations can help identify and fix potential security risks before they are deployed to production.
• Increased Transparency and Auditability: Version control allows for tracking changes to IAM configurations, making it easier to identify who made changes and when, which is crucial for compliance and audit purposes.
• Streamlined Collaboration: Infrastructure as code enables collaboration between development, operations, and security teams, enabling them to define and manage IAM configurations together.

The Limitations of Infrastructure as Code Platforms

Modern cloud environments require instant creation, modification, and deletion of authorization policies and resources. This means redeployment for every change made is out of the question, and manual permission updates are nearly impossible. Additionally, they often involve a complex mix of on-premises and cloud-based infrastructure, creating potential policy conflicts across different domains.

Several tools and platforms, such as AWS CloudFormation, Terraform, and Pulumi, are available to support Infrastructure as Code. These tools allow developers to define IAM resources and policies declaratively, making them easier to manage and maintain.

While these tools allow for the provisioning and management of IAM resources and models, such as role-based access control (RBAC), they often fail to meet the demands of modern hybrid cloud environments.

Traditional IAM tools are often static and lack the flexibility to adapt to these dynamic changes. While suited for broad authorization decisions, they struggle to provide the fine-grained access control (FGA) needed in modern scenarios, lacking the ability to restrict data access based on specific user attributes, such as time of day or a user's location, or support hierarchical relationships with role derivation (ReBAC).

To effectively address these challenges, more sophisticated authorization solutions are required. These solutions need to support ABAC and ReBAC policies and make changes that can be updated in real time across the various parts of the hybrid cloud infrastructure.

In the next section, we will see how OPAL, an open-source policy administration layer, helps address these challenges.

Implementing Hybrid Authorization with OPAL

Open Policy Administration Layer (OPAL) is an open-source project that offers a unique, edge-first architecture fit for hybrid cloud infrastructure, pairing it with hybrid authorization.

OPAL’s approach shifts the heavy lifting of authorization decisions to the edge, placing them closer to applications and users. This strategic shift brings significant benefits, especially in hybrid environments where low latency, high resilience, and data privacy are of utmost importance. Here are some of its benefits:

Decoupled Authorization

OPAL provides a centralized platform for managing authorization policies, separating policy decision-making from application logic. This separation simplifies policy management, making it easier to update and enforce policies without changing the application code.

Policy-Based Authorization

OPAL leverages policy-based authorization (PBAC) through its use of policy languages such as Rego and Cedar, which are domain-specific languages created for expressing policies.
These policies can be authored and managed centrally through the OPAL Server and then distributed to the edge for efficient and real-time enforcement.

Multiple Authorization Model Support

As OPAL uses policies written as code in declarative, policy-oriented languages, these offer support for the creation of fine-grained, context-aware access control policies that can consider various attributes, such as user roles, resource properties, and environmental conditions, through various models, including RBAC, ABAC, and ReBAC.

Understanding the basic benefits that OPAL provides, let’s dig a bit deeper into its architecture and the full spectrum of benefits it can provide -

The OPAL Architecture

As mentioned before, OPAL acts as a centralized control plane for authorization policies and a decentralized data/enforcement plane, abstracting the complexities of policy distribution and enforcement across different environments. It enables unified policy management regardless of whether the application components reside on-premises, in private clouds, or in public cloud infrastructures.

OPAL's modular architecture and extensible design make it a great tool for adapting to the unique needs of hybrid authorization scenarios. Let’s see what it looks like:

OPAL Architecture: Key Components

1. OPAL Server: The OPAL Server is responsible for managing and distributing policy updates. It acts as a central repository for policies, providing a single source of truth for authorization decisions.

The server also handles policy versioning, ensuring that applications always have access to the latest policies. Additionally, it can integrate with various policy data sources, such as databases or APIs, to provide context for policy evaluation.

1. OPAL Client: The OPAL Client is a lightweight library that integrates with applications to fetch and enforce policies. It periodically polls the OPAL Server for policy updates and caches them locally.

When an authorization request is made, the client evaluates the request against the cached policies, providing a real-time authorization decision without requiring a round trip to the server. This approach ensures low latency and high availability, even in distributed environments.

1. Policy Data Sources: OPAL can integrate with various data sources to provide context for policy evaluation. This allows policies to be based not only on static attributes but also on dynamic data fetched from external sources.

For example, a policy might grant access to a resource only if the user's department is "engineering" and the current time is within business hours. This data can be retrieved from an HR database or a time service, allowing for a more secure and context-aware authorization decision-making process.

OPAL as a Hybrid Cloud Security Solution

Through its architecture that prioritizes efficiency and real-time enforcement, OPAL offers significant advantages for managing authorization policies in hybrid cloud environments.

Simplified Policy Management

OPAL centralizes policy management, allowing developers to define, update, and distribute policies across diverse environments with ease. This centralized control ensures that all components—whether on-premises or cloud-based—adhere to consistent authorization rules without manual intervention or complex redeployments.

Real-Time Policy Updates

One of OPAL's key strengths is its ability to propagate policy updates in real-time. OPAL Clients, which run alongside applications, continuously receive the latest policy changes, ensuring that every authorization decision is made based on the most current policies. This responsiveness is critical in dynamic environments where access requirements frequently change.

Centralized Control and Visibility

OPAL serves as the single source of truth for managing authorization policies. By centralizing control, it provides organizations with comprehensive visibility over access control decisions across their entire infrastructure, simplifying audit processes and ensuring consistency in security practices across both cloud and on-premises components.

Scalability and Performance

Built to scale, OPAL is capable of handling large volumes of policy updates and authorization requests efficiently. Its architecture allows it to seamlessly support distributed hybrid environments, ensuring high performance without compromising on security or responsiveness.

Authorization-as-a-Service at the Edge

Through its edge-first approach, OPAL allows you to deploy lightweight Clients that run alongside applications, either on-premises or in the cloud. These clients operate as sidecars, fetching and caching the latest authorization policies from the OPAL Server. When an authorization request is made, the client can evaluate the request locally, reducing the need for constant communication with the central server. Permit.io, through OPAL, provides Authorization as a Service specifically designed for edge environments.

Advantages of the Edge-First Approach

• Reduced Latency: By making authorization decisions locally, OPAL minimizes latency, ensuring that access controls do not introduce delays in application performance.
• Increased Resilience: If connectivity to the central server is disrupted, the OPAL Client continues to enforce policies based on cached data, ensuring uninterrupted service and maintaining security.
• Enhanced Data Privacy: Sensitive data required for authorization decisions can remain within the organization’s network, reducing the risk of data leakage or exposure by limiting the need to transmit data externally.
• Authorization-as-a-service integration: Through its edge-first approach, OPAL allows for integration with authorization-as-a-service providers like Permit.io. This helps combine real-time, low-latency policy enforcement with saving development time, ensuring regulatory compliance, and providing interfaces that allow non-technical stakeholders to manage authorization, reducing developer bottlenecks.

Conclusion

Securing hybrid cloud environments requires a flexible, scalable, and real-time approach to authorization. OPAL’s edge-first architecture, with its centralized policy management and real-time enforcement, offers a good solution to the security challenges posed by hybrid infrastructures. By enabling fine-grained access control, real-time policy updates, and integration with authorization-as-a-service providers, OPAL simplifies policy management, reduces latency, and enhances data privacy. As hybrid clouds continue to grow in complexity, leveraging tools like OPAL ensures developers can maintain efficient and consistent access control across their entire infrastructure.

You can support this project by giving it a star on GitHub, and joining OPAL’s Slack community, where there are thousands of devs building and implementing authorization.