Is Cloud Business Moving too Fast for Cloud Security?

As more companies migrate to the cloud and expand their cloud environments, security has become an enormous challenge. Many of the issues stem from the reality that the speed of cloud migration far surpasses security’s ability to keep pace.

What’s the holdup when it comes to security? While there’s no single answer to that complicated question, there are many obstacles that are seemingly blocking the path to cloud security.

In its inaugural “State of Hybrid Cloud Security” report, FireMon asserted that not only are cloud business and security misaligned, but existing security tools can’t handle the scale of cloud adoption or the complexity of cloud environments. A lack of security budget and resources compounds these concerns.

What Are the Risks of Fast-Paced Cloud Adoption?

Of the 400 information security professionals who participated in the survey, 60 percent either agreed or strongly agreed that cloud-based business initiatives move faster than the security organization’s ability to secure them. Another telling finding from a press release associated with the report is that 44 percent of respondents said that people outside of the security organization are responsible for securing the cloud. That means IT and cloud teams, application owners and other teams are tasked with securing cloud environments.

Perhaps it’s coincidental, but 44.5 percent of respondents also said that their top three challenges in securing public cloud environments are lack of visibility, lack of training and lack of control.

“Because the cloud is a shared security model, traditional approaches to security aren’t working reliably,” said Carolyn Crandall, chief deception officer at Attivo Networks. “Limited visibility leads to major gaps in detection where an attacker can hijack cloud resources or steal critical information.”

While the emergence of the cloud has enabled anytime, anywhere access to IT resources at an economical cost for businesses, cloud computing also widens the network attack surface, creating new entry points for adversaries to exploit.

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