Data plays an important role in providing the insights and intelligence that power business decisions, but first organizations will need to implement the right mechanisms to ensure the data they analyze is secured and can be trusted.
With data fast becoming the single most important asset for businesses across a range of sectors and industries, legacy architectures can hold back efforts to extract real value.
Traditionally, data has been gathered and stored in disparate silos. From an organizational perspective, there is no centralized way of knowing how much data there is, where it is located, whether it is accurate, who is using it and what it is used for. This creates a murky data landscape where significant opportunities are lost due to the sheer volume of data and a lack of trust and confidence in its integrity.
Depending on the industry vertical, this can trigger various ripple effects, from missed sales opportunities to reduced customer retention or failure to identify trends within complex data sets such as medical research or fraud analytics.
In contrast, organizations with an effective data governance model establish a robust data security architecture that provides the ability to effectively label (classify), catalog, track and control access to mission-critical data. Without this framework, businesses run the risk of making decisions based on incorrect or untrusted data as well as exposing sensitive data to unauthorized parties.
In 2021, the Australian Auditor-General found gaps in how local government agencies manage cybersecurity, including a lack of basic internal controls, risk management frameworks and cyber-risk policies. These gaps can potentially lead to breaches, which can result in data theft and leakage—an infrastructure that compromises data integrity enables cybercriminals to access critical systems, alter data and disrupt operations.
With security threats lurking, organizations need to put in place mechanisms to ensure their data is consistent, accurate and controlled to gain the trusted business insights and intelligence they need from it. Access to data should be restricted to only users who need it and be properly logged and audited so there is visibility on when a piece of data has been changed, who changed it and how it was changed.
Organizations need to be able to trust the data, end to end. This should apply to any environment they choose to run, including cloud.
The scalable nature of cloud, spanning computing and storage, makes it the perfect hosting platform for data processing and analytics. However, until recently, organizations have been hesitant to allow sensitive data to be stored in the cloud due to security concerns. This has proved a significant challenge to businesses wanting to leverage the benefits of the cloud, underscoring the need for more robust cloud architectures.
CyberCX – Authority to Operate on AWS
Access this datasheet to learn how CyberCX supports the Authority to Operate on AWS program.
Download NowNeed for Cloud to Have Built-In Security Controls
With companies moving to the cloud to drive digital transformation, it is important to work with platforms that deliver native security controls and services to ensure businesses remain compliant with regulatory and security requirements.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides a range of robust security tools that monitor and safeguard data moving into and out of cloud resources. Customers also inherit all the best practices of AWS policies, architecture and operational processes designed to address the most stringent security requirements.
Over the past few years, AWS has worked closely with leading regulatory bodies to attain certification of its services for various industry-standard compliance programs and requirements, including NIST, PCI, HIPAA and the Australian Government Information Security Manual (ISM).
In addition, AWS services that support workloads for government organizations adhere to all essential security standards and compliance frameworks. These include FedRAMP, FISMA, Australia's Information Security Registered Assessors Program (IRAP) and Japan's Information System Security Management and Assessment Program (ISMAP).
AWS’s focus on providing compliance assurance has opened the door to a wide range of industries to adopt public cloud as their hosting platform of choice.
AWS also works with partners such as CyberCX to help customers meet their regulatory and public-sector compliance requirements. As one of Australia's leading cybersecurity service providers, CyberCX is the first local AWS partner to join the Authority to Operate on AWS Program. This program aims to support AWS partners in addressing customers' authorization needs, which include architecting, configuring, deploying, and integrating tools and controls.
CyberCX adopts DevSecOps best practices to provide a range of automated build, configuration and deployment services on the AWS cloud. Its offerings include integrated security testing, monitoring and continuous compliance.
AWS customers such as Origin Energy rely on CyberCX's expertise to resolve complex business challenges, ranging from fraud detection and churn reduction to predictive analytics. Origin Energy is a major integrated energy generator that operates the largest coal-fired power station in Australia, supplying electricity and natural gas to homes and businesses across the country. Origin is among the first in Australia to implement Amazon Redshift Cloud Data Warehouse, which enables the energy company to gain insights from its data and deliver better services to its customers.
CyberCX's data and managed services teams provide operational and engineering support for several analytics tools and technologies deployed within Origin’s environment. Apart from Amazon Redshift, Origin leverages tools that include data analysis with Amazon Athena, ETL/ELT processing with Amazon Database Migration Service and Hadoop cluster management with Amazon EMR.
Together, these solutions provide real-time analytics capabilities that enable Origin customers to query and model their energy usage and projected spending.
Native AWS services not only improve the Australian company's data loading and compute capabilities but also offer machine learning components via AWS SageMaker.
Public cloud solutions powered by AWS offer scalability and flexibility, delivering the ideal hosting platform for big data workloads. Working alongside AWS Advanced Consulting Partners such as CyberCX, AWS customers across public and private sectors can design and build enterprise-grade data solutions that leverage the power of modern cloud-native services.
