☁️ CLOUD SECURITY • QUICK-START GUIDE

      The Fastest Way to Cloud Security: A Quick-Start Guide to the Shared Responsibility Model    

By CyberDudeBivash • October 07, 2025 • How-To Guide

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Disclosure: This is a foundational guide for IT and security professionals. It contains affiliate links to relevant enterprise security solutions. Your support helps fund our independent research.

 Quick-Start Guide: Table of Contents 

1. Chapter 1: The #1 Rule of Cloud Security
2. Chapter 2: The Model Explained in 60 Seconds — Who is Responsible for What?
3. Chapter 3: Your 5-Point Security Checklist (The Customer’s Responsibility)

Chapter 1: The #1 Rule of Cloud Security

If you remember nothing else, remember this: the Shared Responsibility Model can be summarized in one sentence.

The cloud provider (AWS, Azure, GCP) is responsible for the security **OF** the cloud. You, the customer, are responsible for security **IN** the cloud.

Misunderstanding this single point is the root cause of almost every cloud data breach. This guide will give you the fastest way to understand your responsibilities.

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Chapter 2: The Model Explained in 60 Seconds — Who is Responsible for What?

The balance of responsibility changes depending on the cloud service model you use.

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) – e.g., Amazon EC2, Azure VMs

They Manage: The physical data center, servers, and hypervisor.
YOU Manage: Everything else. This includes the guest operating system (patching it!), the network configuration (firewall rules), your application, your data, and all user access.

PaaS (Platform as a Service) – e.g., Heroku, Azure App Service

They Manage: Everything in IaaS, PLUS the operating system and the application runtime (e.g., the database engine).
YOU Manage: Your application code, your data, and all user access.

SaaS (Software as a Service) – e.g., Microsoft 365, Salesforce

They Manage: Almost everything—the infrastructure, the OS, and the application software.
YOU Manage: Your data and your users. You are still 100% responsible for configuring the application securely and managing who has access to your data.

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Chapter 3: Your 5-Point Security Checklist (The Customer’s Responsibility)

No matter which cloud model you use, you are ALWAYS responsible for these five critical security domains. This is your quick-start checklist.

1. Secure Your Identities:** The #1 cause of breaches is stolen credentials. You MUST enforce strong password policies and, most importantly, mandate Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for all users.
2. **Secure Your Data:** You own your data, you are responsible for it. Classify it, know where it is, and encrypt your most sensitive information both at rest and in transit.
3. **Secure Your Configurations:** This is the second biggest cause of breaches. You MUST ensure your cloud storage (like S3 buckets) is not public, and your firewall rules (Security Groups) are not overly permissive.
4. **Secure Your Workloads:** If you are using IaaS, you are responsible for patching your virtual machines and protecting them with endpoint security software.
5. **Secure Your Code:** If you are deploying applications in the cloud, you are responsible for writing secure code and managing the vulnerabilities in your open-source dependencies.

 Manage Your Side of the Bargain: The best way to manage your responsibilities is with a unified cloud security platform. A **Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP)** like **Kaspersky Hybrid Cloud Security** gives you the tools you need—from Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) to find misconfigurations, to Cloud Workload Protection (CWPP) to protect your VMs.  

For a more in-depth analysis, please see our **complete CISO’s guide to the Shared Responsibility Model**.

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About the Author

CyberDudeBivash is a cybersecurity strategist with 15+ years in cloud security architecture, risk management, and governance, advising CISOs across APAC. [Last Updated: October 07, 2025]

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