82% of senior IT professionals told Aptum that control and governance have manifested themselves as security and compliance issues in the cloud, as infrastructure continues to expand and diversify.
Visibility through a single portal followed close behind as another common cloud security and compliance issue, which arises for 81% of respondents, while 80% said they had problems with gaining the ability to meet requirements of compliancy audits.
Despite 91% of organisations being successful in increasing security as a result of adopting cloud services, this remains a top concern for many.
Over half (51%) see security as a key factor in cloud adoption, but 38% cited security and data protection as the primary barrier to transformation.
This research makes up the second part of Aptum’s Cloud Impact Study, with the first part revealing that over half of participants (59%) plan to take a hybridised approach to their cloud infrastructure, reducing presence of on-premise in favour of more public cloud deployments.
The results of Aptum’s latest research reinforce the importance of incorporating security into cloud architectures from design through to implementation and transformation, and call for firms to take a holistic approach to cloud architectures, with security principles being embedded in the design.
Cloud leading companies through Covid-19 crisis, says Aptum research
“Organisations are enjoying a newfound agility as they embrace hybrid cloud solutions, but scattered workloads present a security concern,” said Craig Tavares, global head of cloud at Aptum.
“A cloud environment is only as secure as the polices and controls an organisation has in place, which is why they need to be built into the formation of any cloud strategy.
“Although no single solution on its own can guarantee 100% security, especially in a multi/hybrid cloud approach, experienced partners can assist organisations in choosing the right combination of security technologies that compliments their workloads no matter where they are hosted and ensure visibility across disparate environments.”
Managed service provider Aptum is partnering with Alert Logic to safeguard business critical data across the infrastructure and application stack, offering a combination of security technology, threat intelligence and 24/7 support from experts.
Dan Webb, vice-president of partner sales and alliances at Alert Logic, commented: “Security teams are tasked with protecting a widening attack surface, often with limited budgets and resources, against bad actors who are employing the same sophisticated techniques as top cyber security providers.
“With the ubiquity of cloud and hybrid environments, containerisation, and mobile, IoT, and other edge devices, the traditional notion of a perimeter is no more.
“To be effective, security solutions must enable total visibility across an organisation’s IT estate to help organisations quickly identify, prioritise, and respond to all threats that surface.”
Aptum surveyed 400 senior IT professionals in the US, Canada and the UK, across financial services, IT, technology, telecommunications, manufacturing, retail, public and commercial sectors. The full study can be accessed here.
