Sergey Nivens - stock.adobe.com
Increased complexity leaves users struggling with cloud security
Research from MSP Aptum shines a light on the struggles that are being experienced by large numbers of users
The vast majority of customers are not in a position to detect and respond to cyber attacks that are impacting their cloud environments.
Hybrid cloud MSP Aptum has shared details from its annual Cloud impact report, which shows that customers are struggling with complexity and visibility issues.
The experiences of the pandemic, with the wholesale shift to remote working, accelerated the adoption of cloud, but customers have also found that complexity has increased in parallel.
That situation has left high numbers of users scrambling to protect and manage data. Aptum found that 90% of respondents listed control and governance of access to cloud environments as a challenge, and the same percentage also felt they lacked a clear mechanism to detect and respond to security threats across all environments.
“Businesses use different environments for different purposes,” said Marvin Sharp, vice-president of product strategy at Aptum. “For example, a platform for application development and another as a production site. That’s where you achieve the benefits of a hybrid cloud environment.
“But moving workloads between the two environments puts data at risk,” he added. “Therefore, in a hybrid work environment, organisations need to consider securing point A and point B, as well as the movement of data between them.”
In the past, financial criteria have been the main influencers of customers’ cloud choices, but the report revealed that security was increasingly the number one issue that customers were looking for assurances over.
Drivers to cloud
- Half of the respondents cited efficiency as the top motivator.
- Increased security is the second-most important business driver for firms investing in cloud computing.
- Resilience is also near the top of the list, with 40% ranking it as a primary driver of cloud investment.
The other takeaways for the channel are that although many customers are struggling with security, those issues have not dampened the desire to move more towards the cloud.
The research underlined the momentum on that front, with high numbers of respondents (91%) indicating that they considered cloud computing essential for data management. Slightly more than half also believed it had a positive impact on data governance.
There should also be an opportunity for the channel in its trusted advisor role to help customers around cloud strategy.
The report revealed that only 20% of organisations had a holistic cloud strategy in place. The remaining 80% were following a fragmented approach that made it more difficult for them to follow a long-term vision.
