CASHING IN
from network-centric security to datacentric security .
People didn ’ t purchase security like network firewalls because they needed firewalls . Rather , they needed to protect something of value : their data . However , you can ’ t defend moving targets , your remote workers and data , with traditional point products . The cost and resources required is bad maths . You can ’ t keep a complicated treasure map of where everything is stored . The number of potential houses and open doors to data will be a major factor in spurring the movement to consolidation .
The other is the reality that as the importance of data grows , the usage of multiple clouds increases exponentially . Cloud transformation no longer means putting all your data in one public cloud provider . It ’ s naïve to think that a cloud is simply IaaS – like Azure or AWS . IaaS is only one use case for cloud . Multi-cloud goes beyond IaaS to encompass SaaS , in the prevalence of cloud-based apps like Workday and Slack ; PaaS , or platforms used to build custom apps ; and CaaS for containers . It ’ s any cloud service that can
Petko Stoyanov , Global Chief Technology Officer at Forcepoint
deliver data to our employees , contractors and partners . No company is a single cloud user , everyone is multi-cloud , and this is a future we need to embrace .
Within this definition of multi-cloud , we must also include on-premises private clouds . The best kept secret of multi-cloud is that it is hybrid – and everyone will continue to be hybrid for years to come . Think of applications you maintain in the data centre due to regulatory compliance or economic reasons .
A big concern with clouds is data residency and regulation . Privacy laws govern the physical locations for users and physical storage for data . Your data or users may be in the US , for example , but your global headquarters is in Germany . Regulated industries like finance and healthcare will continue to deploy applications onpremises until emerging technologies like Confidential Computing become more mainstream . ( Confidential Computing secures your data in the cloud by keeping it encrypted while it ’ s being processed ).
Even if they ’ re not highly regulated , some businesses may find it makes more fiscal sense to retain corporate infrastructure . They may have a small number of private applications with a long history of data , say seven or 10 years ’ worth . It can be more cost-effective to secure records through an appliance housed in the data centre instead of in the cloud . Security organisations , therefore , need hybrid deployment , as onprem is just an extension of what they have in the cloud . Teams will seek ways to manage access and control to those appliances or to the data through the cloud .
Greater unification of those access controls will be vital to organisations amid their transformation journeys . Unifying security management starts
No company is a single cloud user , everyone is multicloud , and this is a future we need to embrace .
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