The core issue is not the encryption algorithm but the management and control of the encryption keys. If the vendor uses the cloud provider’s default managed keys, the cloud provider retains technical access to the data. SISA’s framework emphasizes the principle of ‘exclusive control’ for sensitive data, making unauthorized provider access a critical third-party risk that must be assessed and documented.

While stopping the encryption is urgent, powering off the server destroys volatile memory (RAM), which may contain crucial forensic artifacts like encryption keys, malware samples, or attacker commands. The SISA CSPAI process prioritizes evidence preservation following initial containment. Creating a forensic image captures the system’s state for later analysis, which is vital for understanding the attack vector and preventing recurrence, before moving to eradication and recovery steps.

Simply running tools in the pipeline is not enough; they must be actionable. SISA’s approach emphasizes governance and measurable outcomes. Defining clear, severity-based policies (e.g., failing a build for critical vulnerabilities) ensures the tools drive real behavioral change and prevent vulnerable code from progressing. This creates a automated, policy-driven gate that is core to a mature DevSecOps practice.

For ‘Confidential’ or similarly high-sensitivity data, logging and monitoring of access is a fundamental, non-negotiable security control. It is essential for detecting misuse, supporting incident investigation, and demonstrating compliance with regulations like GDPR or PCI DSS. While encryption and MFA are highly recommended, specific mandates can depend on context (e.g., data at rest vs. in transit). Anonymization is a good practice for test data but is not always a strict mandatory requirement for all handling scenarios.

In the IaaS model, the cloud provider is responsible for security *of* the cloud (physical infrastructure, hypervisor, network hardware). The customer is responsible for security *in* the cloud, which includes managing the guest OS, applications, data, and identity/access management installed on their provisioned virtual machines. Patching the guest OS is a clear customer responsibility.

Maintaining legacy, unsupported systems is a high security risk. The secure and practical approach is to migrate the data to a supported, secure archival platform. This process must maintain the confidentiality (encryption) and integrity of the data throughout the migration. The target system should have appropriate access controls and auditing. This aligns with SISA’s principles of secure data lifecycle management, ensuring protection even in archival stages.

Security governance is not about rigid denial but informed risk management. The first step is always to understand the context: How critical is the system? What data does it handle? Is it on an isolated network? This risk assessment informs whether an exception is justifiable and, if so, what compensating controls (like MFA or network segmentation) are necessary. A signature alone does not mitigate risk; understanding the context does.

The principle of least privilege mandates that access should be granted only as necessary. While the data isn’t sensitive, public access is a broad privilege. The secure, scalable solution is to remove blanket public access and implement a controlled mechanism like a CDN (CloudFront) with signed URLs or an Origin Access Identity. This allows legitimate users (e.g., website visitors) to access the materials while removing the risk of anonymous, unlogged access to the storage bucket itself, which is a security best practice.

Zero Trust operates on the principle of ‘never trust, always verify.’ A user’s location (inside the corporate network) is not a trusted factor. Every access request, regardless of source, must be authenticated, authorized, and encrypted. Prompting for MFA to access a sensitive system from *inside* the network exemplifies this. A traditional VPN that grants broad network access after initial login is the antithesis of Zero Trust, as it creates a trusted internal zone.

The core issue is not the encryption algorithm but the management and control of the encryption keys. If the vendor uses the cloud provider’s default managed keys, the cloud provider retains technical access to the data. SISA’s framework emphasizes the principle of ‘exclusive control’ for sensitive data, making unauthorized provider access a critical third-party risk that must be assessed and documented.0