For years now it’s been clear that cloud adoption is the best vehicle for accelerating digital transformation, and in the times we live in, it’s sometimes the only way to carry out that transformation in an agile way, aligned with organizational goals. The business benefits are broad, and the need to adopt cloud services quickly and securely is now one of the biggest concerns for technology leaders, from the CIO to the CTO to the CISO. But how do you do it transparently, without friction?

The context

Structural digital transformation initiatives, external factors (we’re still in the middle of the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic), and companies’ need for speed to market with new products and services all mean cloud adoption isn’t just a reality, it’s an imperative for competitive advantage. However, this “flood” of initiatives, often led by the business and executed independently with minimal (or close to zero) involvement from the CISO and security teams, makes secure adoption very difficult, since it introduces new threats, risks and attack vectors.

In this complex environment, it’s also worth noting that security teams find it genuinely difficult to quickly build the knowledge and skills needed to secure the cloud. There’s a real race to find people with real knowledge and experience in cloud security.

All these factors, new risks and scarce resources, mean that cloud adoption is often, if not outright failed, at least highly exposed to cyberattacks. To back this up, consider what analysts like Gartner say: “through 2023, at least 99% of cloud security failures will be the customer’s fault”; or what the U.S. National Security Agency states: “cloud misconfiguration remains the most prevalent vulnerability and can be exploited to access cloud data and services.”

Given this scenario, what can CISOs and their teams do to secure the cloud?

The path to Cloud Security

Ultimately, there’s no single solution that works like magic; still, it can be summed up as doing the homework security teams have always done, while paying close attention to the challenges and particularities of cloud technologies. How you approach a cloud security program depends on an organization’s maturity level. We identify three broad categories: “New to the Cloud,” “Tasting the Cloud,” and “Living in the Cloud.”

At INNOVATE, we’ve built a Cloud Security services offering, along with methodologies and accelerators, that help our clients approach cloud security comprehensively, with agility and without friction. Our services span the full maturity spectrum: from cloud security assessments, to defining layered cloud security architectures built on cloud-native architecture principles, to their implementation through processes and specialized tools geared toward modern architectures (e.g., microservices, containers and serverless), through to operations and maintenance.

We’ll share more detail on our services offering and its components in future posts. Based on our real-world experience, we can help you no matter where your organization stands on its secure cloud adoption journey. Reach out, we’re listening.