Highlights
- As cloud services have evolved over several decades, compliance and security have gone from being hurdles to one of the drivers of cloud-based digital transformation.
- While the cloud ecosystem has matured, change is still happening rapidly, especially with the push to implement generative AI solutions.
- Best practices dictate that enterprise security strategy and solutions today must be scalable, agile, and cloud platform agnostic.
- While cloud providers offer sophisticated cybersecurity, an enterprise is ultimately responsible for selecting and configuring the tools and creating a comprehensive security strategy.
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Cloud security matures
When cloud computing was new, several decades ago, security and compliance were sometimes seen as hurdles to its adoption.
As enterprises began to move more activities to the cloud, they may have kept certain networks and systems on-premises to ensure the highest level of control and security. Today, the sophisticated security tools available from the largest cloud providers underscore an opposite argument: Improved cybersecurity can be a leading driver of cloud transformations.
The TCS Risk & Cybersecurity Study report says that a threshold has been crossed in attitudes towards cloud-based security. Just 32% of respondents said on-premises systems and traditional data centers were safer than the cloud, while a majority said the cloud was either less risky (34%) or not discernibly different (28%) compared to an on-premises approach.
Every organization has different cybersecurity circumstances and expectations based on where it operates, sector, and structure. But across all types of requirements, enterprise security and cloud security are now married.
Most organizations are well served by the extensive cybersecurity tools and services available from the hyperscalers. These offerings provide the best opportunity for an organization to be ready to respond to growth and change, as well as to answer the accelerating security challenges that come with new generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) capabilities.
Shared responsibility
Hyperscalers provide security tools that are tightly integrated with cloud service offerings.
They also offer cloud-based enterprise solutions that are platform agnostic, such as network security detection and monitoring applications, to serve the entire organization, across multiple systems. These are loosely coupled with cloud services and complementary to the cloud’s integrated security tools. Cloud offerings in this area are evolving rapidly.
But even with these capabilities offered by hyperscalers, enterprises need to adopt a shared responsibility model. Cloud providers are strong partners in the security realm, But ultimately, the responsibility for enterprise cybersecurity rests with an organization’s IT leadership. They must decide on the right mix of solutions and configure the controls to support a comprehensive strategy. An enterprise must ensure the effectiveness or coverage of those controls—even as security rules and expectations shift and underlying platforms change.
Creating the ecosystem
As security expectations evolve and compliance requirements become more complex, enterprises need a forward-looking approach.
They should be prepared to develop and adopt cloud cybersecurity tools and strategies capable of meeting future needs.
Organizations need to focus on the following key points to ensure a robust cybersecurity ecosystem.
- Scalability: A scalable approach ensures that tools and processes can automatically expand and adapt as the enterprise adds more users, devices, and data to the cloud, and as it responds to evolving threats. Leveraging cloud-native security solutions can provide an organization with security controls that are elastic.
- Agility: An agile approach is vital to help an organization not only respond to emerging threats, but also adapt to changing technologies, including new generative AI (GenAI) capabilities. Evolving rules and regulations and changing business needs also demand flexibility.
- Platform agnostic solutions: Such solutions make it possible to grow and change without being tied to a specific cloud service provider. Security frameworks such as zero trust can be implemented across multiple cloud platforms or a hybrid cloud. Cloud providers offer important enterprise security solutions that are multi-cloud, as do third-party providers.
In many ways, security leaders are spoiled by choices. Hyperscalers provide extensive options and continue to innovate and develop new monitoring and security tools. Third-party providers have their own broad range of solutions. It’s up to enterprise security leaders to examine what they need to meet their business goals and regulatory compliance obligations.
AI changes the game
Security tools have become more advanced ass cloud offerings matured in the past decade.
Now something similar is likely to unfold as GenAI solutions are offered on the cloud. The computing power and infrastructure that enterprises need to build great AI products will likely be delivered by hyperscalers.
The security implications are significant. As much as new AI technologies may boost efficiency and drive innovation for business, GenAI will also open doors for cybercriminals and create new threat vectors. This new type of threat demands a shift in security thinking.
AI-based security threats need to be met with AI-based security tools, which the hyperscalers are also well-positioned to provide. New AI tools have the potential to make cybersecurity more predictive and proactive, bringing down detection and response time. New AI models promise greater security automation compared to what was possible previously. Indeed, de-risking AI adoption presents a security challenge that must be met by both the enterprise and cloud providers—an expression of the shared responsibility model.
Partnership ecosystem
The evolution of cloud security and the key role for the solutions that hyperscalers now offer, points to the importance of the partnership ecosystem.
Enterprise leadership should be able to rely on their services partners for the right relationships. This ecosystem should bring in the best tools and solutions to the table—at the top level, for out-of-the-box products and at deeper levels where solutions are built on specific platforms and models.
Every organization’s services partner should be able to present the use cases that are going to benefit their enterprise clients—and know how these will be delivered. The arrival of new AI technologies only makes this more urgent. In the end, this ecosystem will justify cloud migrations with better security results and improved returns on cloud investment.
As we continue to embrace cloud technology, businesses are encouraged to recognize that they hold the ultimate responsibility for their cybersecurity posture. By carefully selecting and configuring their security tools, and by establishing a solid strategy, enterprises can significantly reduce risks and safeguard their valuable assets in the cloud. Emphasizing this proactive approach will empower organizations to thrive in a secure digital environment.
