Accelerated Multicloud Adoption Demands Need to Address Security and Governance Challenges

By Keith Neilson, Technical Evangelist, CloudSphere

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to accelerate digital transformation to support business operations with a remote workforce, cloud services have become the standard for powering these new workflows. To truly reap the benefits of cloud environments, enterprises must ensure proper security and governance measures are in place to keep data secure, ultimately preventing costly breaches and tarnished company reputations.  

As IT teams are under pressure to address cloud security and governance challenges with tightened budgets, rising multicloud adoption will demand the need for enhanced visibility into environments, increased use of AI to flag potential threats, and reliance on MSPs for guidance in 2021. Below are the trends we can expect to see this coming year.

AI Will Gain Momentum in Cloud Security and Governance

In 2021, AI will go far beyond simply detecting anomalies and thereby flagging potential threats to security teams. Cloud governance is an increasingly complex task and is quickly reaching a point where it's impossible for humans to manage alone. AI will increasingly be relied on in the coming year to maintain cloud hygiene by streamlining workflows, managing changes and archiving. Once proper cloud hygiene is established and maintained with AI, it will also be used as a strategic predictive knowledge tool. By predicting and addressing threats and vulnerabilities, AI will help enterprises create the best possible outcome for their cloud environments. Leveraging AI as a strategic asset will empower CIOs to make informed decisions about their cloud environments, such as evaluating costs and compliance risks.

Multicloud Adoption Will Continue to Accelerate as the Global Pandemic Keeps Work and Learning Remote Through 2021

According to 451 Research, enterprises anticipate workloads primarily executed in cloud-based external environments to increase from 36% in 2020 to 63% in 2022. As organizations and managed service providers accelerate cloud initiatives to support remote work and learning amid the COVID-19 pandemic, they will gain a deeper understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of each public cloud provider. After understanding the different types of applications that run better in which cloud, the need for adopting more than one cloud provider will become clearer. In a recent survey, Gartner found that 81% of organizations work with two or more cloud providers already. The trend toward multicloud adoption will only accelerate in 2021, and the disparity of tools used by enterprises creates demand for a consistent management solution to maintain visibility and control, as well as reduce costs.

Securing and Governing Multicloud Environments Will be the Top IT Challenge Facing Enterprises

As digital transformation accelerates, the complex and self-service nature of cloud infrastructure makes it easy for mistakes to me made (e.g. access granted to users or machines that should never have been granted) and lack of visibility into the cloud makes these mistakes difficult to spot and correct. In fact, Gartner predicts through 2025, 99% of cloud security failures will be the customer's fault, and 90% of organizations that fail to control public cloud use will inappropriately share sensitive data. Because of this, identity and access management (IAM) for individual and machine users will be a top challenge in 2021. To make IAM digestible and manageable by humans and therefore avoid data exposure, organizations will increasingly implement cloud ownership guidelines and governance policies to visualize who--or what--has access to specific resources in the cloud.

A Surge in M&A Deals Requires Visibility into Inherited Infrastructure

Most M&A deals were put on hold amidst the economic and political uncertainty of 2020. Despite the shift for many organizations' budgets, M&A activity within the United States is expected to return to pre-COVID-19 levels within the next 12 months, according to research from Deloitte. Previously, we have witnessed companies suffer massive data breaches as a result of poor infrastructure documentation and visibility following an M&A deal, triggering record-breaking fines and great financial loss. These incidents have forced the issue of IT security and proper hygiene to the forefront of such deals moving forward. If one or both of the parties does not have proper security controls and documentation of their infrastructure, it is sure to stall the acquisition process. Visibility and risk assessment of inherited infrastructure will be a key component of the due diligence process in 2021 and beyond.

With Diminished IT Budgets, Enterprises Will Increasingly Look to MSPs for Guidance 

Gartner recently revised its 2020 security spending forecast amid COVID-19, reducing the originally predicted 8.7% growth rate to only 2.4%. Unfortunately, as spending goes down, companies may be unable to expand their team or adopt new technology--but the high expectation of security and functionality remains the same. To cope with the increasing budgetary pressures while continuing to support a secure and productive remote workforce, organizations will heavily rely on MSPs for guidance on how to manage, govern and secure their IT operations in a cost-effective manner.

Companies Will be More Global Than Ever Before, Demanding Democratized Security

A talent gap has existed in cybersecurity for years, making it difficult for organizations to recruit and retain the security professionals they need. However as companies dealt with stay-at-home orders and a forced shift to remote work over this past year, it has become more and more obvious that people can perform their jobs from almost anywhere. This means companies can look at an expanded geographical pool of candidates for new hires in all business departments, not just security. And with this increased globalization/dispersion, security must evolve to a more democratized approach where it is delivered at the edge and on the various endpoints used by the global workforce. 2021 will see the demise of the centralized security strategy. 

With enterprises favoring cloud strategies in 2021, addressing security and governance challenges will be a top priority. By leveraging MSPs for guidance, enhancing visibility across cloud environments and using AI to address threats and maintain cloud hygiene, enterprises can make the most of their cloud strategy through 2021 and into the future. 

##

About the Author

Keith Neilson, Technical Evangelist for CloudSphere

As CloudSphere's Technical Evangelist, Keith is responsible for the company's analyst and cloud provider relationships and strategy with a focus on ensuring the wider market understands the business and technical value proposition of the CloudSphere platform. In addition to helping create collateral and messaging that supports the company's go-to-market, Keith ensures that customer use cases are documented back into the various internal teams to ensure product advancements are geared towards real world scenarios and contribute to the company's vision. Prior to CloudSphere, Keith held senior lead pre-sales engineering and management roles at Optibus, Cloudhouse and Sourcebits with a successful reputation for creating and defining compelling product positioning, advocating product advancements internally, leading strategic partner & customer engagements and creating and executing GTM strategies that attributed to significant growth. He has a broad and strong multi-discipline skillset with a focus on cloud migration, modernization and management.