Best practices for securing on-premises cloud services¶

1. Identity & Access Management (IAM):¶

Least Privilege, Maximum Paranoia

• Replace default service accounts with custom ones restricted to per-application roles. No one needs admin rights to deploy a PDF generator.

• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Enforce it for all human access. SMS is better than nothing, but hardware tokens (YubiKeys) are ideal .

• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Map Kubernetes/OpenStack roles to team functions (e.g., dev-readonly, prod-admin).

Service Account Hell

• Rotate service account keys every 90 days—or better yet, use short-lived certificates (e.g., Vault-managed tokens).

• Audit service accounts monthly. Orphaned keys are like unlocked backdoors.

2. Network security: Assume you’re already breached¶

Segmentation Over Hope

• Air-gap critical workloads: Finance and healthcare systems shouldn’t share a VLAN with the office printer.

• Zero Trust Networking: Authenticate every request, even internal ones. Tools like SPIFFE/SPIRE help .

• Firewall Rules:

  • Block all inbound traffic by default. Yes, even SSH. Use jump hosts.

  • Log all denied traffic. That mysterious midnight connection attempt from Belarus? Investigate it.

Encryption In Transit

• TLS 1.3 everywhere, including internal services. Self-signed certs are a last resort—use a private PKI (e.g., Smallstep).

• MACsec for inter-rack traffic. Because eavesdropping isn’t just a cloud problem .

3. Monitoring & threat detection¶

Log Like Big Brother Is Watching (Because He Is)

• Aggregate logs to a SIEM (e.g., Graylog/Wazuh) outside the production network. Tamper-proof storage is key.

• Alert on anomalies: Failed logins at 3 AM? New sudoers entries? Investigate immediately.

Container-Specific Checks

• Use Falco for runtime container monitoring. That crypto miner in your nginx container won’t hide for long.

• Image Scanning: Integrate Trivy or Anchore into your CI/CD pipeline before deployment .

4. Data protection¶

Encryption At Rest

• LUKS/KMS for disks: Because losing an unencrypted backup drive is a GDPR nightmare waiting to happen.

• Key Rotation: Automate it. Manual key rotation is as reliable as a chocolate teapot.

Sensitive Data Handling

• Data Loss Prevention (DLP): Scan for PII/credentials in logs and storage. Redact or pseudonymise where possible.

• Immutable Backups: Use write-once storage for backups. Ransomware can’t encrypt what it can’t overwrite.

5. Governance & compliance¶

Policy As Code

• Define security policies in Terraform/Ansible, not Confluence docs nobody reads. Enforce via CI/CD checks.

• CIS Benchmarks: Hardened images for Linux/Windows. No, “default install” isn’t secure .

Binary Authorization (For Containers)

• Only allow signed, attested images. Use Sigstore/Cosign for signing, and reject anything unsigned .

• Continuous Validation: Scan running containers for drift from approved baselines.

When to ignore these rules¶

• Legacy systems: Can’t air-gap that 2003-era ERP? Isolate it and monitor like a hawk.

• Developer experience: Security shouldn’t cripple productivity. Use vaulted credentials instead of blocking Docker entirely.

How?¶

For a DevSecOps pipeline integrating these practices, follow the On-Prem DevSecOps Pipeline:

1. Pre-Deployment:

   • Scan code/images in CI (Trivy, Checkov).

   • Sign artifacts with Sigstore.

2. Deployment:

   • Enforce policies via Kubernetes Admission Controllers (e.g., OPA/Gatekeeper).

3. Runtime:

   • Monitor with Falco/Prometheus.

   • Automate patching (e.g., RHEL Satellite/WSUS).

Cloud-native tools work on-prem too. The goal isn’t to replicate AWS—it’s to build a secure, auditable, and maintainable system without surrendering control to Silicon Valley.