Securing Mendix Deployments in the Cloud

Security in the cloud is a critical issue. According to IBM, nearly half of all security breaches are cloud-based, with statistics showing that 45% of security incidents are cloud-based. These disturbing figures show an increasing need to secure cloud deployments. Therefore, securing Mendix deployments in the cloud is crucial to protecting your data and application from known risks. 

Mendix solutions provide various security controls for deploying applications in the cloud. This article is for you if you’re new to securing Mendix deployments in the cloud environment. This article will comprehensively address practices for securing Mendix deployments in the cloud.

6 Best Practices for Securing Mendix Deployments in the Cloud

Some best practices for securing your Mendix deployments in the cloud include the following: 

Use Secure Authentication and Authorization

Secure authentication and authorization mechanisms are key to ensuring the security of your Mendix deployments. These mechanisms ensure that only authorized parties access your Mendix data and applications. 

You can consider authentication techniques, such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) for user accounts and application components, to limit access to only authorized persons. Also, you can use the role-based access control mechanism to restrict access. This technique ensures that only users with appropriate permissions access your Mendix deployments based on their roles and responsibilities. 

To set roles and their attributed permissions, open Roles and Permissions and define the access rights for your pages, microflows, and workflows.

Use Encryption and Routing

Encrypt data at rest and in transit to ensure that only the verified persons (with the correct decryption key) can access and understand your data. Mendix supports different encryption techniques, including SSL, TLS, and HTTPS, to encrypt data transmitted from the sender to the recipient. 

Visit here for: Low-Code Solutions

Also, Mendix supports secure routing. The Mendix Runtime running in the application container is accessed through a load-balancing clustered Nginx web servers routing layer. This layer routes the incoming traffic to the appropriate application environment, where the web server handles the TLS connections. All common security and access services from the IaaS provider are utilized for the traffic entering their infrastructure.

Additionally, the TLS connection begins at the browser and ends at the web server service in the load-balanced routing layer. As a result, your Mendix deployment data is encrypted end to end. Therefore, other application environments cannot tamper with or intercept it from the target environment. 

Regularly Patch and Update 

Regular patching and upgrading secure your Mendix deployments in the cloud from known threats. Therefore, you should keep your Mendix platform and all the underlying infrastructure, such as databases and operating systems, up to date with the latest updates and patches.

Mendix provides regular updates of the underlying software that enables deployments in the cloud following the Mendix Information Security Policy. So, you should constantly check for updates. 

Most of the Mendix platform updates have no effect on the application or availability settings. However, if Mendix suspects a possible impact on your cloud deployments, it will follow the SLA guidelines and inform you about the maintenance window. 

Monitor and Audit Your Mendix Cloud Deployments

Monitoring your Mendix cloud deployments helps you identify and fix anomalies before they become big issues. Therefore, you should integrate monitoring and auditing mechanisms to track and log activities in your Mendix deployments.

Mendix provides a platform (Cloud Portal) that lets you manage users and environments and monitor and manage their performance. This Cloud Portal is built with Mendix and inherits all platform security features. 

From this portal, you can manage users and configure access based on their roles and monitor who has what access to which Mendix cloud deployments. Also, as an administrator, you have a detailed, real-time view of the app performance metrics through a dashboard in the Mendix low-code platform. This includes details on the app environment, memory usage and CPU, user logins and database requests, and predefined alerts. Therefore, you can use this monitoring dashboard to identify and respond to issues as they arise. 

In terms of auditing, all relevant actions related to your Mendix deployments, including cloud environments and apps, are logged. You can view and download the logs from the Mendix Cloud Portal for further auditing. This way, you’ll always be proactive in responding to potential threats. 

Backup Your Mendix Cloud Deployments and Plan for Disaster Recovery 

The worst thing you can do is lose your Mendix cloud deployments in case of a disaster. To ensure that doesn’t happen, implement regular backups of your Mendix apps and data, and test the restore process to assess data availability and integrity. This will help you build a comprehensive disaster recovery plan. 

Fortunately, Mendix provides daily backup for all data, including file storage, databases, and models, for Test, Acceptance, and Production environments. These backups are stored in secured, geographically-dispersed locations.

Both backup and production data use cloud storage. Therefore, they are subject to the storage limits related to the Mendix platform subscription acquired. You are advised to establish an internal protocol for testing and using backups. 

Regarding disaster recovery, Mendix Cloud offers multiple disaster mitigation strategies, such as auto-recovery and high availability with deployments to several availability time zones. In fact, disaster recovery tests are conducted on this low-code platform and reported in various certifications, such as ISAE 3402 Type II report and ISO/IEC 27001:2013. 

Adopt Secure Development Practices

When building your Mendix applications for cloud deployment, following best practices for securing them in this highly vulnerable environment is crucial. Implement practices like proper error handling, input validation, and output encoding. Doing so will prevent common cloud security vulnerabilities, such as cross-site request forgery (CSRF) and SQL injection. 

Final Thoughts 

Securing Mendix deployments in the cloud helps prevent them from data breaches, unauthorized access, and other cloud security vulnerabilities. Adopting secure authentication and authorization, encryption, and monitoring and auditing Mendix cloud deployment activities, can help secure your apps and data. The Mendix platform eases the process of securing Mendix cloud deployments. For instance, it provides tools and features to help you secure your cloud deployments. 

So, why build insecure cloud deployments? Follow these practices and build secure Mendix cloud deployments.