Want to go from confused to confident in cloud security meetings ? Learn these 18 Concepts
Even If You're Not in Security
Walking into your first cloud security meeting can feel like entering a room where everyone’s speaking a different language.
In your first meeting, listen for these terms and note the context.
Most importantly, these terms represent real challenges and solutions.
When someone mentions “blast radius,” they’re worried about business impact.
When discussing “data residency,” they’re concerned about compliance penalties.
Understanding the terms helps you grasp the underlying business and technical problems being solved.
Let’s dive-in
1. Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA)
The security model that trusts nothing and verifies everything.
Unlike traditional perimeter-based security, Zero Trust assumes breach and validates every transaction, regardless of whether it originates inside or outside the network.
When someone mentions “implementing Zero Trust,” they’re talking about requiring authentication and authorization for every resource access attempt.
2. Service Principal
A non-human identity used by applications and services to access cloud resources.
In Azure, these are application identities; in AWS, similar concepts exist through IAM roles for services.
Service Principals helps resources talk to each other in Cloud without human intervention.
3. Assumed Role Session/STS Token
A temporary security credential that allows users or services to act with different permissions than their default identity provides.
Why this is important ?
Assumed Role can limit the privilege of user/service identity via giving limited access to resources, sometimes time bound access.
This is critical for cross-account access and privilege escalation workflows.
4. Data Residency
The physical or geographic location where an organization’s data is stored and processed.
This isn’t just about which data center houses your servers.
It’s about compliance with regulations that require certain data types to remain within specific jurisdictions.
E.g., As per GDPR, data must resides within European Union.
5. Blast Radius
The potential impact scope if a security incident occurs.
A small blast radius means a breach affects only isolated resources; a large one means cascading failure across systems.
Architecture decisions often revolve around minimizing blast radius through segmentation and isolation.
E.g., Too many admins for a system can increase the blast radius.
6. Control Plane vs. Data Plane
The control plane manages and configures cloud resources (the management interface), while the data plane handles actual data processing and movement (the workload traffic).
Security incidents in the control plane are typically more severe as they affect resource management capabilities.
7. CSPM (Cloud Security Posture Management)
Automated tools that continuously monitor cloud infrastructure for misconfigurations and compliance violations.
They prevent configuration drift and maintain security baselines.
8. Workload Identity
The identity assigned to workloads (containers, VMs, functions) rather than users.
This enables applications to authenticate to other services without embedding credentials in code.
In Kubernetes, this might be a service account; in AWS, an instance profile.
9. Admission Controller
In Kubernetes and cloud-native environments, these are gatekeepers that intercept requests to create or modify resources before they’re persisted.
They enforce policies like “no containers can run as root” or “all images must come from approved registries.” etc.,
10. Drift Detection
The process of identifying when actual cloud resource configurations deviate from their intended state defined in Infrastructure as Code.
Like noticing someone manually changed a setting through the console that should only be modified through Terraform.
Critical for maintaining compliance and preventing shadow changes.
E.g., AWS Config can detect drift if someone modified the S3 bucket. It will show previous state and current state.
11. Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP)
The convergence of multiple cloud security tools into a unified platform covering the entire cloud application lifecycle.
CNAPPs combine CSPM, CWPP (Cloud Workload Protection Platform), container security, and Infrastructure as Code scanning.
12. Secrets Leak
Spread of credentials, API keys, and certificates across cloud environments, often hard-coded in applications or stored in multiple vaults.
Modern secret management such as Hashicorp Vault, Azure Key Vault or AWS Secret Manager, involves centralized vaults and dynamic credential generation.
13. Shadow AI
Unauthorized or unmonitored use of AI services and tools within cloud environments.
14. Landing Zone
A pre-configured, secure, multi-account cloud environment that serves as the foundation for an organization’s cloud adoption.
Think of it as a move-in ready neighborhood with all utilities, roads, and security already established.
AWS Control Tower and Azure Landing Zones provide blueprints for consistent, compliant cloud foundations.
15. Guardrails vs. Gates
Guardrails are preventive controls that allow flexibility within safe boundaries whiles gates are approval checkpoints that stop progress until cleared.
E.g.,
Blocking public access to storage such as S3 is a Guardrail.
Blocking Terraform deployment due to open port 80 in Security Group is a Gate.
16. Break-Glass Access
Emergency access procedures that bypass normal controls during critical incidents.
These accounts are heavily monitored, require justification, and trigger immediate alerts when used.
E.g.,
Login to a server via jump server is the security control established for access.
Login directly to server via SSH Keys during an incident is Break Glass Access.
17. Sidecar
A companion container that runs alongside your application container to handle security functions like encryption, authentication, and monitoring.
18. Image Signing and Attestation
Cryptographic proof that container images haven’t been tampered with and meet security requirements.
Signing proves authenticity while attestation provides additional claims about the image (like a quality inspection certificate).
Tools like Cosign and Notary enable supply chain security.
Conversation Starters
“What’s our stance on...”
Runtime security vs. shift-left security?
Sidecar patterns for security controls?
Break-glass procedures for production access?
SLSA levels for our software supply chain?
“Have we considered...”
Implementing microsegmentation for our critical workloads?
Moving from gates to guardrails in our deployment pipeline?
Using PrivateLink to reduce our internet-facing attack surface?
And Boom-There you have it.
Putting it all together
Sidecar
Shadow AI
Secret Leak
Blast Radius
Landing Zone
Drift Detection
Data Residency
Service Principle
Workload Identity
Break Glass Access
Guardrails vs. Gates
Admission Controller
Assumed Role Session
Control Plane vs Data Plane
Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA)
Image Signing and Attestation
CSPM (Cloud Security Posture Management)
CNAPP (Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform)
Chat Soon,
- Kushal
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Love how you framed blast radius as business impact rather than just technical scope. The guardrails vs gates distinction is critical and I've seen too many teams default to gates becuase they're easier to implement. In practice, guardrails require way more upfront design work but pay dividends in velocity once they're running. One thing I'd add about break-glass access is the importance of post-incident reporting, we've found that requiring a writeup within 24 hours of break-glass use dramatically reduces unnecessary invocations.