Security Challenges Delay Enterprise Migrations to the Cloud, New AlgoSec Survey Shows

Enterprises embracing hybrid cloud gradually, but need better visibility and security management processes to accelerate application deployments in the cloud, prevent cyberattacks and compliance violations

October 31, 2017

Ridgefield Park, NJ, October 31, 2017 – Most enterprises face major challenges when managing security across their hybrid enterprise networks both during and after cloud migrations, according to the new ‘Hybrid Cloud Environments: The State of Security survey from AlgoSec, the only provider of business-driven security policy management solutions.

The international survey of 450 senior security and network professionals reveals the insecurities around enterprises’ hybrid cloud strategies. While nearly a third (32%) plan to increase their public cloud usage in the next 12 to 18 months, the majority harbor significant concerns about cyberattacks and breaches in their hybrid environments, and encounter problems with their visibility and security management processes.

Key findings from AlgoSec’s ‘Hybrid Cloud Environments: The State of Security survey include:

• Security concerns front and center: respondents’ greatest concerns about their applications in the cloud are cyberattacks (58%) and unauthorized access (53%), followed by application outages and misconfigured cloud security controls.  These concerns are hampering wider use of public clouds, with nearly 40% of respondents saying that security is inhibiting further adoption of cloud platforms.
• Cloud obscures security visibility, hampers security management: the biggest security management challenges enterprises face in hybrid environments are a lack of visibility (63%) and managing security policies consistently (61%).  Demonstrating compliance and managing a mix of traditional and virtual firewalls and cloud security controls are also cited as major issues. These challenges highlight the need for solutions that can manage and automate security processes holistically across both cloud and on premise networks.
• Manual cloud migration mishaps: respondents report a range of problems when migrating applications to public clouds.  44% have difficulty managing security policies post migration, 32% have difficulty mapping application traffic flows before starting a migration project, and 30% reported that their applications did not work after the cloud migration – emphasizing the need for automation solutions that can manage this highly complex process end-to-end.
• Automation benefits in hybrid clouds: 26% of respondents said they use automation to manage security in their hybrid environments, while 20% use manual processes. Enterprises that use automation said the top reasons for doing so were speed and accuracy of security changes, ability to speed up migrations to the cloud, audit and compliance reporting, and overcoming staffing limitations – highlighting the security and operational benefits of automation.

“The survey clearly shows that most enterprises are driving their business transformation strategies by expanding their usage of public cloud infrastructure. But they also have significant security concerns about how they will secure and manage their increasingly hybrid environments,” said Joanne Godfrey, director of communications at AlgoSec. “As organizations increase their public cloud deployments and migrate applications, it’s essential that they have complete visibility across both on premise and cloud networks, together with the ability to automatically and holistically manage security policies.  This enables them to better protect the business and fulfil compliance demands, while taking full advantage of the cost savings and agility offered by the hybrid cloud model.”

About the Survey

Conducted in Summer 2017, the survey polled 450 C-level executives, and senior security and network professionals in organizations worldwide, from a range of industry sectors. All the companies that participated in the survey were required to have at least some of their business workloads in the cloud.

Click here for the full report, “Hybrid Cloud Environments: The State of Security” and infographic.

About AlgoSec

The leading provider of business-driven security management solutions, AlgoSec helps the world’s largest organizations align security with their business processes. With AlgoSec users can discover, map and migrate business application connectivity, proactively analyze risk from the business perspective, tie cyber-attacks to business processes and intelligently automate network security changes with zero touch – across their cloud, SDN and on premise networks. Over 1,500 enterprises, including 20 of the Fortune 50, utilize AlgoSec’s solutions to make their organizations more agile, more secure and more compliant – all the time. Since its inception, AlgoSec has offered the industry’s only money-back guarantee.

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