Adopting New Strategies to Increase Agility
In order to capitalize on cloud velocity, organizations must adopt new approaches and tools developed for the cloud. Failing to do this will delay migration, weaken overall security posture and cost time and money, losing the agility they seek.
Organizations are in the midst of a digital transformation, and many are looking to surge past their competition – or rush to try to keep up with the pace of business. It is now a strategic business requirement to deliver online services and products as rapidly as possible or risk being left in the dust. The cloud delivers the velocity businesses seek, but those diving in head-first learn a difficult truth: cloud security is very different from on-premises architectures. In order to capitalize on cloud velocity, security teams must adopt new approaches and implement new solutions engineered specifically for the cloud. Failing to evolve may hinder migration, deteriorate overall security posture and cost time and money trying to make it work.
Aligning Security with the Speed of DevOps
Based on a recent research study by Hurwitz & Associates, mid- to large-sized organizations are increasingly evolving their security strategy to advance their cloud strategy. The need for new approaches is imminent, with 85 percent of businesses deploying significant cloud projects. Interestingly, 35 percent of these businesses have implemented a cloud-first strategy, with all new projects started in the cloud. You don’t need another article to tell you businesses are moving to the cloud. We all know that.
Unfortunately, there is an internal battle raging between what takes precedence: security or speed to market. This study found that executives are more concerned about measuring risk and having visibility on how secure their cloud environment is. Developers and DevOps advocates are mainly focused on speed and faster time to market. Historically, development and security teams have been siloed, but in the cloud, this drive for velocity makes it very easy to overlook foundational security requirements. Aligning security with the speed of DevOps is a difficult challenge, but it’s necessary to strike a balance here to advance the cloud footprint without creating new holes within the organization. Hence the rise of DevSecOps best practices.
Security Now Has a Seat at the Table
As organizations begin to prioritize security, the adversarial relationships between security and IT operations begin to diminish. Nearly 90 percent of large organizations now claim their security and cloud operations teams work closely together. Organizations are even instituting a cloud-first attitude, engaging the security team before developers begin to code. This is a vast shift from the days when security was an afterthought carried out in testing, the pilot phase or even production. In doing this, several positive benefits typically unfold. Unsurprisingly, most believe that early security engagement results in less cybercrime and data loss. On the contrary to mainstream thought, the other top benefit of early security engagement is faster delivery times and reduced project costs. The ultimate result is that a security-first approach provides safe and secure applications and services that don’t put organizations or customers at risk.
What Businesses Need Cloud Security Solutions to Deliver
In asking organizations what cloud security functionality is most important to them, real-time incident detection, automation and visibility from cloud-specific solutions were the clear leaders. Immediate incident response was top of mind and increasingly more important as strategies evolve. An overwhelming 95 percent agreed that cloud automation is increasingly important to meeting business goals as well. Achieving visibility of all levels of the cloud is perhaps the most challenging but the only way to ensure cloud services are up-to-date and secure. Knowing exactly what you have in the cloud and where it is gives teams instant actionable insights. Combine this with automation and immediate incident response and organizations can maintain agility and achieve continuous security. That is, if and only when security and development teams are aligned and working together beginning in the planning phase of any project. If these recommendations are evaluated and adopted when planning a migration to the cloud, organizations can navigate the transition without losing the agility they seek.
Sanjay Kalra is co-founder and CPO at Lacework, leading the company’s product strategy, drawing on more than 20 years of success and innovation in the cloud, networking, analytics and security industries. Prior to Lacework, Sanjay was GM of the Application Services Group at Guavus, where he guided the company to market leadership and a successful exit. Sanjay also served as Senior Director of Security Product Management for Juniper Networks, and spearheaded continued innovations in the company’s various security markets. Sanjay has also held senior positions at Cisco and ACC. He holds 12 patents in networking and security. 
