Cloud-First World: It’s time to solve the cybersecurity skills gap

Introduction

The business benefits of cloud services and container usage are evident – reduced costs, better agility and flexibility, and faster time to market. While enterprises are increasingly realizing the business progress and innovation opportunities that cloud adoption offers, many have found out it comes with a couple of new security and compliance issues.

According to a recent IDC survey of Chief Information Security Officers in the US, in the past 18 months, 79 percent of companies have experienced at least one cloud data breach. Misconfiguration, insecure interfaces, unauthorized access and account hijacking are among the top ranked cloud threats. Hacking and misconfiguration errors are among the most common sources of data breaches, per 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report by Verizon.

So, what does this mean? Cloud security has to keep evolving to keep up with innovation and emerging challenges.

As businesses speed up cloud adoption, cybersecurity talent, particularly cloud security, is scarce. As per a report, seven out of ten cybersecurity pros reckon that their companies have faced some sort of a cybersecurity skills gap. In addition, over 60 percent of businesses report that security roles remain unfilled for at least three months. Further, only one in five organizations assess their cloud security posture in real-time. And 22 percent of organizations still assess their cloud security posture manually, which exhausts their security resources and even paves a way for human errors in assessment.

Even though these facts and figures paint a bleak outlook, there are a few options to help businesses protect their cloud and keep costly breaches at bay.

Team up with a cloud security partner

Businesses can and should turn to cloud security partners who provides secure cloud solutions. Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, and Google cloud all run on a shared responsibility model to shoulder some of the burdens in shielding applications and data from outside threats.

In general, this implies that cloud service providers protect their IT infrastructure from cyberattacks, but it is up to organizations to ensure security and compliance for the workloads running on that infrastructure. 

In addition to the mentioned security partners, organizations can also take the hands of managed security services providers to ease off on their responsibility and fill the in-house expertise gap. While it does add a line item to the IT budget, ultimately, it lets businesses curb expenses, bolster security, and allow security teams and IT operations to route internal resources to other tactical business efforts. Organizations must consider several factors to choose the right managed cloud security services provider that delivers an integrated platform with streamlined workflows and a simplified interface. Such centralized management enables IT professionals to easily view and monitor all events, as well as stay more efficient at preventing security threats. 

Also read: Critical Cyber Security mistakes organisations make

Adopt low or no-code security solutions for faster deployment

Conventional cybersecurity solutions come with high deployment costs that arise from the customized configuration. They often require code-driven customizations to satiate the complicated needs of business IT infrastructure. For small businesses, this might be a one-time investment but can be a recurring long-term expenditure in keeping the solution in force for large businesses. Picking up technology that’s easier to deploy is another way to address the cybersecurity skills shortage in the cloud.

Your IT staff can curb security costs and deploy faster with security solutions in the cloud that leverage minimal or no codes. With features such as integration templates, drag-and-drop interfaces, and packaged pre-mapped industry controls, security pros can speed up the deployment with lesser development resources. This eliminates the need for further development cycles to plan, create, and execute the changes.

Add another layer with ML for comprehensive cloud security

Several companies utilize machine learning (ML) to strengthen their cloud security strategy. ML enables security pros to quickly discover, examine, and respond to known and unknown threats. Generally, ML’s primary usage is related to baselining automation procedures and usual behaviour, as well as alert interconnection to discover suspicious activities.

ML algorithms apply appropriate context to signals concerning compliance and security-related problems, oddities, and non-adherence changes to the IT infrastructure and application bundle by packaging-associated security activities collectively. As such, security pros can trim operational expenses (OpEx) and spend more resources and time to risk hunting and remediation steps.

That said, ML will not stave off the need for human intervention in cloud security. Rather, it will improve the efficiency of security experts, including outside security teams for organizations that utilize them. Just like extensive alerting rules and deep telemetry, the data generated by ML has to be put into context by a human, who will eventually make decisions about the right way to go.

In addition to ML capabilities, comprehensive security platforms encompass security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) technologies.

Finding the Right Prescription

Analyzing and coping with the security skills gap in the cloud is pretty different today than it was just a couple of months ago. By 2021, 83 percent of the organizations will shift their workloads to the cloud as more and more companies continue to switch from private to public cloud services.

As businesses continue to guide remote employees and look toward executing a hybrid model, the shift toward more flexible workplace solutions and processes will only surge.

Without solid cloud security and adherence strategies in situ, businesses will increase their risk profile as they scale up their cloud usage, exposing themselves to potentially detrimental breaches and attacks.

Teaming up with a strategic security partner ensures organizations can leverage the many distinct benefits and capabilities of today’s computing climate without incurring further risk.