LRS uses third-party cloud services such as Microsoft Azure to host our software for our customers when this is included as part of a Managed Services contract.
LRS Managed Services technicians and LRS Product Support staff utilize cloud distributed software and management tools for designing and managing cloud sites, redundancy, availability, and capacity planning. The cloud infrastructure has extensive business continuity and disaster recovery plans in place including, but not limited to, pandemic response plans that are constantly evaluated and updated.
Our teams monitor and log data dealing with data center’s access review, logs, etc. This information is stored and constantly reviewed and evaluated. Surveillance and detection methods are employed like CCTV, controlled ingress, and security monitoring intrusion detection. Cloud vendor datacenters implement the device management procedures following procurement.
For Azure, there are two major monitoring components that LRS uses to manage hosted environments. The Azure Monitor is highly configurable for generating alerts and proactively notifying technicians when important conditions are met, or are near a threshold(s), as data is monitored. This allows technicians to identify and address issues before business users experience any issue.
Secondly, the Azure Security Center generates alerts for resources deployed in Azure, as well as for resources deployed on-prem and in hybrid cloud environments, when threats are detected. Security Center prioritizes and displays the alerts and provides the information needed to investigate each alert. Security Center uses cloud Smart Alert Correlation to correlate separate alerts and low fidelity signals into security incidents (i.e., a collection of similar/same alerts) for targeted and quick resolution to a widespread risk or issue.
Security Center also works with connected partner solutions such as firewall and endpoint protection solutions. Security Center analyzes the information, often correlating information from multiple sources, to identify threats. The Security Center employs advanced security analytics that include integrated threat intelligence, behavioral analytics, and anomaly detection.
For hybrid, on premise, or non-Azure hosted environments, Azure Arc is another tool used to monitor both Windows and Linux systems. Azure Arc routes the monitoring metrics from the installed agent through Azure Monitor and Security Center. Arc takes advantage of those cloud tools, wherever the servers may exist.
AWS datacenters, for example, are monitored by multiple operational support systems like redundant power, climate and temperature control, fire detection and suppression systems, and water leakage detection. The infrastructure consisting of electrical and mechanical equipment is maintained with information and audit tools for environment management and equipment maintenance. AWS performs on-going data center risk management through threat and vulnerability evaluations both internal and through third-party security attestation. AWS is constantly evaluating potential threats and designing, implementing, and testing controls to ensure the systems, technology, and people they deploy counteract risk.
Similar and competent techniques and tools are in place at other cloud vendors as well.