We’re architecting our integration hub migration to AEC 2023 cloud and the security and compliance implications are more complex than expected. Our on-premise integration hub connects to 15 external systems including payment processors, ERP, and customer data platforms.
On-premise we control the entire security perimeter - firewall rules, VPN tunnels, certificate management. Cloud introduces API authentication protocols we haven’t used before and audit logging requirements that seem more stringent.
Specific areas where I need community wisdom:
- How do cloud API authentication protocols compare to traditional VPN-based security? Are OAuth 2.0 flows actually more secure or just different?
- What audit logging capabilities exist in cloud that might not have been available on-premise?
- For organizations with GDPR, HIPAA, or SOC2 compliance requirements, does cloud make compliance easier or harder?
Our compliance team is nervous about data crossing cloud provider boundaries and our integration partners are asking questions about certificate trust chains and API rate limiting that we never dealt with on-premise.
Looking for real-world experiences from security and compliance perspectives, not just vendor marketing materials.
From a HIPAA perspective, cloud made our compliance posture stronger but required significant documentation updates. The cloud provider’s BAA (Business Associate Agreement) covers most technical safeguards, but you still own the implementation of access controls and encryption. The automated audit logging is a huge win - we can demonstrate complete API access trails for HIPAA audits without custom logging infrastructure. However, you MUST configure encryption in transit and at rest correctly - the defaults aren’t always HIPAA-compliant.
Rate limits are configurable per API endpoint in the cloud API Gateway console. Default is 1000 requests per minute per client, but you can adjust based on your integration needs. For service-to-service OAuth, you use the client credentials grant flow - the service itself is the OAuth client with its own client ID and secret. No user involved. We have 12 automated integrations running this way and it’s actually cleaner than managing VPN service accounts.
GDPR compliance actually became EASIER in cloud for us. The cloud provider’s built-in audit logging captures every API call with timestamp, source IP, and data payload metadata. On-premise we had to build custom logging infrastructure. Cloud also provides automated data residency controls - we can ensure EU customer data never leaves EU regions, which was manual policy enforcement on-premise.