By Trilio Content Team | October 7, 2022
More organizations than ever are building and deploying containerized applications—an estimated 70% by 2024, according to IDC. Despite the benefits of a cloud-native approach, there are still challenges, like gaps in skills. In fact, 75% of businesses identified a knowledge gap as a key challenge in container adoption, according to Flexera’s State of the Cloud Report.
To help bridge the gap, you might use a managed service like Red Hat OpenShift on AWS (ROSA) or Microsoft Azure Red Hat OpenShift (ARO). Relying on these services can lighten your workload and save you time and money. And fully managed means your apps are covered when something goes wrong, right? Not exactly.
When it comes to data protection in the cloud, the responsibility is on you. Read on to find out what this means for your OpenShift apps in the cloud and how you can protect your data, no matter how or where you manage it.
Red Hat Kubernetes Managed Service Offerings: What is OpenShift on AWS and Azure?
Before we dig into why you need data protection when using OpenShift-managed services in the cloud, let’s break down what they are.
There are currently two OpenShift-managed services in the cloud—one for AWS and one for Microsoft Azure. Here’s a quick summary of each.
- Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA): ROSA provides an integrated, simplified way to use OpenShift on AWS. So, you get the ease of the cloud, plus other great benefits like joint support, pay-as-you-go billing, and ongoing application management.
- Azure Red Hat OpenShift (ARO): ARO offers similar benefits on the Azure cloud. Together, Microsoft and Red Hat provide full management and monitoring of your OpenShift clusters, along with simplified billing and easy scalability.
Does Using a Managed Service Like OpenShift on AWS Protect Your Applications?
However, just because you rely on a managed service for maintaining your containerized environments doesn’t mean that your application data and metadata are protected, recoverable, and mobile. And the built-in protection via your cloud provider isn’t enough, especially when disaster strikes.
So who is responsible for protecting your managed applications in the cloud?
In short, you are.
In fact, public clouds like AWS and Azure use “Shared Responsibility Models” that outline roles and responsibilities—both yours and theirs—when it comes to security and compliance.
But what about your Kubernetes-managed service provider, like Red Hat? They, too, use a model to break down the responsibilities of each party—yours, theirs, and the cloud providers for both ROSA and ARO.
- Red Hat’s Responsibility Assignment Matrix for ROSA
- Red Hat’s Responsibility Assignment Matrix for ARO
Ensuring Data Protection in Containerized Applications: A Focus on Continuous Monitoring and Updates
In today’s changing landscape of technology and data security, it is crucial for organizations to take an approach towards safeguarding data in containerized applications. This involves monitoring and updating strategies and systems to adapt to the evolving threat landscape, technological advancements, and regulatory requirements. In this discussion, we will explore the importance of monitoring and updates in protecting data for applications. Additionally, we will delve into how managed services like Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA) Azure Red Hat OpenShift (ARO), and Trilio can simplify this process.
1. Adapting to Evolving Threats:
As cyber threats continue to evolve they become more sophisticated and agile. Having a data protection strategy can leave organizations vulnerable as it quickly becomes outdated. Regular monitoring enables organizations to detect threats and respond effectively. Containerized applications are particularly susceptible to vulnerabilities, within the underlying infrastructure and application code. By implementing monitoring practices these vulnerabilities can be identified.
2. Keeping Up with Advancements:
Container technology is advancing at a pace. To ensure the security and efficiency of containerized applications it is essential for organizations to keep up with technology updates. These updates include patches that address security vulnerabilities while also improving performance.
Continuous monitoring is essential, for identifying when updates are necessary and available. It can even automate the process of implementing these updates to minimize disruptions.
3. Meeting Regulatory Requirements:
Adhering to data protection regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, and CCPA requires vigilance. Organizations must ensure that their data protection strategies are always in compliance with these changing regulations. Continuous monitoring helps keep track of changes and enables organizations to adjust their data protection measures avoiding costly non-compliance issues.
4. Optimizing Resource Allocation:
Continuous monitoring reveals areas where resources may be over-allocated or under-allocated in the context of data protection. This valuable information can be used to optimize resource usage, which is crucial for cost-effectiveness.
Managed services like ROSA, ARO, with Trilio, play a role in achieving monitoring and updates through the following methods:
1. Automation:
These managed services offer built-in automation capabilities that continuously monitor containerized applications and apply updates. Adjust configurations based on predefined policies. Trilio specifically provides automated backup and recovery solutions for applications.
2. Integration, with Security Tools:
ROSA, ARO, and Trilio seamlessly integrate with security tools including vulnerability scanners and threat detection systems.
This implies that they have the ability to automatically integrate up-to-date threat intelligence and security patches into your containerized applications and data protection strategy.
3. Scalability:
Managed services provide scalability to accommodate increasing workloads. As your containerized applications grow these services can automatically adjust data protection measures to ensure their continued effectiveness. Trilio is specifically designed to scale with your container environment.
4. Expertise and Support:
Managed services and solutions like Trilio typically offer access to a team of experts who possess knowledge in container security, data protection, and regulatory compliance. They can provide guidance and support in maintaining the efficiency of your data protection strategy.
Continuous monitoring and updates coupled with solutions such as Trilio play a role in ensuring the effectiveness of data protection, in containerized applications. These services and solutions enable organizations to automate these processes, stay ahead of emerging threats, and ensure compliance with evolving regulations. This approach not only enhances security but also allows organizations to focus on innovation and growth instead of constantly reacting to security incidents and updates.
Security and Data Privacy in Containerization
Containerized applications have both advantages and challenges in software development. On one hand, they offer benefits like deployment, scalability, and efficient use of resources. However, this innovative approach also brings security and data privacy concerns that require attention. In this article, we will explore these challenges. Discuss how incorporating Trilio can enhance data protection in environments.
Understanding the Challenges
In the world of containerization, one of the challenges is the increased risk of vulnerabilities, data breaches, and unauthorized access. Containers share a common host OS kernel, which improves efficiency but also means that security is a shared responsibility. If one container has a vulnerability it can potentially expose the environment to risks. Therefore it is crucial to identify and address these vulnerabilities through monitoring and updates.
Data Breaches in Containerization
Data breaches pose a threat to organizations using applications especially because multiple containers coexist on a single host. Unauthorized access or exploiting vulnerabilities can lead to exposure of data. This can result in compliance violations, regulatory fines, and damage to reputation.
Container security is crucial. Should include measures such as access controls, encryption methods, and regular security audits to protect against data breaches.
The Importance of Data Protection Measures (Integrating Trilio):
To address the mentioned concerns regarding security and data privacy organizations need to prioritize the integration of data protection measures in their containerized environments. Data protection includes components with Trilio playing a vital role:
- Access Control and Authentication: Implementing access controls and multi-factor authentication ensures that authorized personnel can access containerized applications. This helps prevent access and maintains the confidentiality of data.
- Encryption: Encrypting data both at rest and in transit is crucial to safeguard information within containers. Technologies like TLS for network encryption enhance data privacy by ensuring that your data remains secure and confidential.
- Regular Container Scanning and Vulnerability Management: monitoring is essential for identifying vulnerabilities in containerized applications. Tools like Clair and Trivy can automatically scan containers for known vulnerabilities while applying patches is necessary to mitigate risks. Trilio also contributes to maintaining the integrity of your data through scanning and backup processes.
Ensuring the security and privacy of containerized applications requires following practices and utilizing tools, like Trilio. It is essential to adhere to Kubernetes security recommendations to protect the orchestration layer and prevent any misconfigurations that could compromise security.
Although containerization provides significant advantages, organizations must address challenges related to security and data privacy. To safeguard applications against evolving threats and maintain data privacy it is crucial to implement measures for data protection, comply with regulations, and adopt practices along with security tools such as Trilio. Trilio specifically caters to OpenStack environments offering a data protection solution. Therefore it becomes a choice for organizations seeking security, for their containerized applications.
Your Data, Your Applications = Your Responsibility
No matter how you slice it, your data and applications are your responsibility. This includes everything from disaster recovery and compliance to identity management and operations.
So, how do you take charge of your data and applications to ensure that they’re available, protected from threats, and easily recoverable when downtime strikes? It starts with your tool.
Because your apps are your responsibility and because you want to move forward with as little disruption as possible when an outage occurs, you need a data protection tool that:
- Maximizes resiliency.
- Is built for the cloud. Though legacy data protection and built-in tools from storage vendors offer some protection, they’re not ideal for protecting cloud-native applications.
- Scales with you and your infrastructure now and into the future.
- Is able to run on any cloud, making it easier to back up your environment, no matter how or where you’re managing it.
Data Protection Doesn’t Have to Be Complicated
If you rely on a managed service like ROSA or ARO to reduce complexity, save time, and free up bandwidth for innovation and productivity in other areas, you might think that being responsible for data protection is complicated. Or maybe it’s simply one more thing to think about.
Either way, your cloud-native data protection platform shouldn’t be complex. In fact, it should help you in other areas. Ideally, your cloud-native data protection should:
- Work across all clouds, storage, and K8s distributions, giving you flexibility as your environment evolves and avoiding vendor lock-in.
- Be application-centric, allowing you to back up and restore all components of your applications (data, metadata, and all Kubernetes objects), no matter how you manage them (by namespaces, labels, Helm, and Operators).
- Scale with you so that you can add more clusters, new applications, or an additional cloud whenever you need to.
- Be easy to manage! Your data protection should be multi-tenant or multi-cluster, allowing you to easily manage your data across clouds and clusters without a separate CLI, and integrated into your Kubernetes API. Also, platforms with automation features like disaster recovery policies make management a breeze.
If you’re using OpenShift on AWS or Azure and need to protect your applications, take a look at TrilioVault for Kubernetes (TVK). It provides application-level backup and recovery for OpenShift in any environment, anywhere you choose to deploy. And it’s fully integrated, optimized, and certified for Red Hat environments.
Full Data Protection and Resiliency for Your Fully Managed Service Offerings
Fully managed services like ROSA and ARO ease the time-consuming, confusing challenges of operating in containerized environments. But they still rely on you to protect your applications.
That’s why you need a data protection platform that’s made for this moment—cloud-native, application-centric, and native to OpenShift. So you can back up your applications and maximize their performance, availability, and resiliency.
Check out more best practices for protecting your applications managed by ROSA or ARO. And learn how TVK has your OpenShift environment covered.
