Barracuda Networks’ Chris Hill explores the difficulties associated with migrating on-premises security
Caspar Herzberg |
This article was originally published in the Spring 2019 issue of The Record. Subscribe for FREE here to get the next issue delivered directly to your inbox.
Recent research by The Cloud Industry Forum has found that cloud adoption and spending had surpassed on-premises IT among businesses for the first time. Almost nine out of ten (89%) businesses are fully immersed in one cloud-based service or another, with adoption levels continuing to rise. For the first time in the cloud’s history, cloud infrastructure receives almost a fifth of businesses’ total IT budgets (19%) and surpasses on-premises and legacy expenditure (18%).
These findings demonstrate that cloud usage has infiltrated almost every organisation in one form or another, bringing improved flexibility, agility, mobility and cost effectiveness. Public cloud offerings – in the shape of Microsoft Azure – have only strengthened this, offering immediate, scalable cloud storage solutions with a range of accessible payment options.
While the benefits of the cloud can’t be argued with, this cloud gold-rush hasn’t come without its obstacles. Top of the list is CIO and IT leaders’ concerns – and confusion – when it comes to keeping up with and securing their dispersed multi-cloud environments. This new workforce has turned the edge of the enterprise on its head, transforming it into a constant, undefined flux. Equipped with laptops, tablets and mobile devices, workers are creating an unprecedented flow of data that simply cannot be controlled by security architectures built for on-premises demands, leaving CIOs around the world dazed and confused.
Against this backdrop, it’s impossible for IT teams to properly visualise their infrastructure, mine the details, gather resource level information and understand the relationship and interconnectivity of those resources and how they affect security posture. This can make it difficult to quantify risk, and even harder to ensure compliance. Organisations are falling back to outdated and, often, bolted on technology in order to ensure security, slowing down their progress and negating some of the most attractive benefits of cloud migration.
To eliminate these pressures, savvy businesses are deploying services such as Barracuda Cloud Security Guardian, equipping them with a full view of their cloud assets – from inter-relationships between network, application, access perspectives and more – so that they can stay secure while building applications in, and moving workloads to, public-cloud infrastructures. The result is a simple visualised security strategy, coupled with the peace of mind gained from ensuring continuous compliance and automated remediation of security controls.
Chris Hill is regional vice president of Public Cloud at Barracuda Networks