In this elastic and inconclusive world of cloud computing, realizing the compliance and security objectives needs modern, autonomous, and agile security strategies. This is expected to foster a culture of ownership regarding security across an organization. Traditional approaches to cybersecurity have been putting organizations at risk. Last couple of years have seen widespread adoption of modern, updated strategies for cloud security that mitigate risks and help organizations achieve their business objectives efficiently.
Most of the traditional IT environments follow a perimeter-based security approach of ‘castles and moats.’ This has made organizations rethink the way they approach data privacy and security on the cloud. Leading cloud providers place high priority to secure their services and infrastructure, subject to stringent, regular third-party compliance audits. Although these CSPs offer a secure foundation, organizations are still responsible for their data security in the cloud and comply with data protection requirements.
Key Steps to Ensure Modern Cloud Security
Collaboration and Converged Approach
Organizations are aligning their IT teams and decision-makers circling an end-to-end view of information protection and infrastructure security, including cloud environments. The first step in furthering an organization’s collective understanding is to standardize the language for discussing data security and the cloud.
Upskilling and on job training activities play a key role, as informed users are part of an organization’s security foundation. Inducing the idea that everyone within an organization has a role to play in the security chain is imperative. This is because any disconnect within an organization’s employees and IT teams will create potentially exploitable gaps.
Integrated Solutions
The chief information security officers (CISOs) have been increasingly emphasizing to minimize the number of tools that they have to manage. However, on the side of cloud development, an explosion of tools & services has been observed, built for specific tasks. This has further given rise to new demand for resources and significantly enhancing risks, which can only be brought under control with convergence and simplification. Most CISOs are looking at converged and integrated security platform solutions as alternative to point solutions.
Modern cloud security includes solutions for an increasing list of necessities, such as next-gen firewalls, CASB, DLP, elements of trust, web security, etc. Behavioral analytics complements these and enables applying the accurate level of access controls for users across disparate and changing systems. This is why, modern cloud security must utilize converged services, as leveraging these is the key to consolidate tools in the security arsenal. This increases effectiveness and reduces operational burden.
Looking at the Risk Posture Through the Data Protection Lens
Cloud adoption continues to accelerate in light of its flexibility and convenience. However, this involves moving organizational data between environments, which calls for a data-centric approach for considering security protocols. There is no single solution for cloud security and organizations need to take comprehensive approaches to better protect their data. Security hygiene remains a must-have, but looking at the risk posture through the data protection lens is also imperative while implementing behavioral analytics and DLP.
Overstressing Results in Lost Opportunities
To sum up, CIOs need to be aware about evolving security threats. They need to ensure that security teams do not hold back any cloud initiative with unsubstantiated security issues. Overstressing over the fears is likely to result in inappropriate spending and lost opportunities. The time now needs CIOs to change their perception from whether the cloud is secure to are they using the cloud securely. Using this approach, organizations can develop an effective cloud strategy and predict the imminent trends in the cloud security landscape and benefit from them.
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