Organizations worldwide are digitalizing their products, services and operations, and moving their applications to the cloud as rapidly as possible. This forced acceleration — though often poorly planned — toward the cloud is occurring for several reasons, both internal and external.
IT leaders within organizations are driving the digital shift because they know it can lead to improvements in product innovation, customer experience and operational efficiency. With regard to the external drivers of this digital push, the recent past has seen the COVID-19 pandemic, with the hybrid workforce being the most obvious example. However, there have also been dynamic business pressures — such as responding to board directives or the prospect of increased competition — that have compelled organizations to intensify their use of the cloud in order to better defend and acquire market share.
Application workflows
Until recently, most people involved in digitalization efforts believed that application workflows only moved in one direction: from a physical on-premises location to a virtual one (the cloud). However, at present, many IT experts are demonstrating that application workflows can be more dynamic when applications can reside anywhere:
- In the data center
- In hybrid or multi-cloud
- In Edge computing
Seamless environments and cloud adoption
The acceleration of digitalisation has enabled many organisations to deliver faster, higher-quality applications and experiences, and to bring applications and data closer to users and devices. Applications must reside where they can deliver the best outcomes for organisations, such as customer experience, performance, cost optimisation, and more. However, fluid environments and cloud adoption create both advantages and challenges for CIOs and CISOs.
On the positive side, fluid environments provide organisations with the flexibility needed for cloud adoption, create new value for customers, and accelerate the return on investment of organisations' digital investments. However, on the negative side, applications residing in multiple different locations require IT teams to devote significantly more time and energy to resolving the complex challenges of protecting all their networks and locations, which have considerably expanded the organisation's attack surface and vulnerability to cyberattacks.
Among other issues related to the expansion of the attack surface, we can cite increased operational complexity, visibility gaps, the explosion of cloud platforms and tools, and "accidental multi-clouds".
Barriers to cloud adoption
All these issues hinder the cloud adoption growth rate. In a recent survey, security professionals stated that the main unforeseen factors slowing down or halting cloud adoption are lack of visibility (49%), high cost (43%), lack of control (42%), and lack of security (22%).
To safely achieve their digital acceleration objectives and maintain momentum, organizations must consider a cloud adoption strategy for applications centered on a cybersecurity mesh platform approach and aim for solutions that offer consistent security, regardless of application location.
The application workflow is fundamentally different today from what it was a short time ago. Today, what CIOs and CISOs tell us is that applications can and should be deployed where they best meet the organization's business needs.
While many are migrating their applications and workloads to the cloud to achieve the promised benefits of digital acceleration, some are pulling back, having decided that certain applications perform better on-premises or in the data center. Other organizations may have a greater need for performance and lower latency and are adopting edge computing accordingly. In most cases, organizations use a combination of these elements in a hybrid or multi-cloud environment.
The risks and challenges of application security
Organisations are all at different stages of application deployment. Many are not entirely certain of the direction their application workflows will take. Despite varied application paths, the core challenges organisations face are fundamentally the same. They result in increased risk due to misconfigurations, operational complexity, loss of visibility and inconsistent policies. These issues are further fuelled and compounded by a lack of organisational resources and employees with the appropriate skills.
The main challenges are as follows:
Applications residing in multiple locations
Given the dynamic nature of where applications can reside, organisations must manage a large number of them and cloud edges across multiple cloud platforms, hybrid clouds and data centres.
Accelerating the Cloud Transition
External factors, such as pandemic-related shutdowns, leadership directives, or competitive responses, have forced organizations to hastily launch cloud initiatives over recent years. Unfortunately, many organizations still have to deal with the repercussions.
Edge Computing
A number of companies are now deploying edge computing architectures and placing applications and data in local clouds closer to the users and devices that depend on them. The objective is to improve user experience and cloud application performance, as well as to reduce costs.
Risks
The greatest risks in the cloud are not hackers, but cloud security misconfiguration, which can leave organisations highly vulnerable to attacks. Other risks include unsecured interfaces and APIs, sensitive data theft and unauthorised access to applications.
Using a cybersecurity mesh platform
As organisations move towards digitalisation, it is essential to successfully execute and protect their application workflows. However, they must accept that there will be mission-critical applications that should not migrate to the cloud and will remain on-premises.
To successfully secure applications that migrate to the cloud as well as those that are not relocated, CISOs and IT teams must use flexible, well-integrated cybersecurity solutions, supported by an extended, consolidated and automated cybersecurity mesh platform. The right mesh platform will enable organisations to protect any application workflow on any cloud, while giving applications the freedom and flexibility needed to evolve according to their requirements.