Next-Generation Technologies & Secure Development

3 Major Benefits of Cloud Migration: Visibility

Design Your Security Strategy to Maximize Visibility Andrew Stevens • July 12, 2022

On the fence about migrating to the cloud because security seems complex and abstract? Let go of your on-premises point products and discover how using a platform with enhanced visibility can help smooth the security for your cloud journey.

You may understand the importance of migrating to the cloud, but all the unknowns about cloud security make you hesitant. Don’t worry - you’re not the only one. According to ISC2, 94% of organizations are moderately to extremely concerned about cloud security.

"According to ISC2, 94% of organizations are moderately to extremely concerned about cloud security."

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While the approach to cloud security is different than on-premises, considering there is no perimeter to protect and workloads/apps are dispersed across many different environments, that doesn’t mean it's more difficult.

Think of it this way: Just because your new home has different locks than your old one, that doesn’t mean it's harder to unlock. You just need a different key, or in this case, a different security strategy. And don’t try jamming your old key - legacy products - into that lock. Eighty-two percent of respondents in an ISC2 survey reported that traditional security solutions don't work at all or have limited functionality in the cloud.

On-premises solutions place great value in north-south traffic, but traditional methods such as firewalls can't always keep up with evolving threats. A firewall, like a motion detector on a door, may alert you to a malicious actor. But being alerted to an intruder is simply not enough to be fully protected. You need security cameras inside to help identify the criminals and their behaviors. In the cloud, visibility of east-west traffic -what’s happening within your network - in addition to north-south, is paramount to detecting threat actors before they wreak havoc.

While 52% of organizations in a SANS survey reported having high confidence in their visibility of north-south traffic, only 17% said the same about knowing what's happening within their networks.

Security by Design

The security by design, or DevOps, approach enables a smoother on-premises to cloud transition by encouraging collaboration between SecOps and DevOps teams to ensure security from migration to expansion that supports, instead of hinders, innovation. Often security is left until the end of the development and migration process. Developers will deploy with security as an afterthought, which leads to security teams using various point products - 108 on average - to manage vulnerabilities to avoid data breaches or hefty compliance fines.

Part of encouraging more transparency and communication between teams is choosing a cloud security solution that meets the needs of IT teams and developers. The best way to achieve this is with a security services platform. Think of using a security platform like a keyring. It’s more efficient to have all your important keys on one ring, instead of having each key in a separate location. Likewise, a platform consolidates security services that are vital for SecOps and DevOps teams, from cloud workloads to containers, serverless applications, file storage, open-source risks, cloud networks, cloud posture and compliance.

Some security platforms can help shift security left for increased visibility into development pipelines and processes for earlier detection and response. Implementing security guardrails early in the pipeline before developers migrate to the cloud helps them hit the ground running, so they can build and deploy quickly and securely.

A platform also provides you with the flexibility to choose, which aligns with the security by design approach. With a platform, you can choose the cloud - hybrid or multi, the environments - public, private and virtual, and the tools necessary to securely meet your organization's objectives.

Security teams may feel over-burdened, and DevOps teams can be resistant to integrating security into their processes. That's where platform-driven automation comes into play. This allows both teams to reap the benefits of security by design without adding to existing workflows.

If you adopt a DevOps culture, it will lead you to a security services platform and vice versa. And as DevOps continues to go mainstream, the benefits of the approach are showing. In 2020, a GitHub DevSecOps survey found that 93% of security professionals said developers caught 25% or less bugs. But as teams continue to shift left - up by 5% to 70% overall, the number of disgruntled security professionals plummeted to 45% in 2021.

Considerations for Choosing a Security Platform

Think carefully about your migration goals and how security will enable you to achieve them. Although security is not one-size-fits-all, in order to get the most comprehensive coverage and protections for your cloud migration journey, consider these key factors:

More visibility: According to an ESG report, 69% of organizations admit that they have a cloud visibility gap. Reduce blind spots with a single source of truth across your hybrid and multi-cloud environments, with complete security controls and integration.
Multi-service: This provides a combination of workload, container, serverless, open-source and even cloud storage, as well as cloud posture and cloud networking protection, for optimal flexibility and simplicity.
Extensive automation: This saves time, money and resources in managing and enforcing security policies across hybrid environments.
Developer-friendly: This means deployment via security as code with API-enabled tools that support continuous integration and delivery to bake security controls directly into developer processes.
Fast-track compliance: Thirty-eight percent of surveyed AWS customers cited compliance as their main day-to-day operational headache. The right platform will integrate automated compliance scanning into your build pipeline to catch any violations before deployment.
Defense in depth: Leverage innovations such as virtual patch and integrity monitoring while using machine learning, AI and threat intelligence to detect and block threats in real time.