As more businesses embrace digital transformation strategies, there is a growing need to ensure robust cloud security solutions are in place. Riaan Badenhorst, General Manager, Kaspersky Lab Africa, discusses the cybersecurity risks of using cloud services and how these can be mitigated with the use of specialist technologies.
With the advancement towards digital transformation remaining a top priority for businesses of any size, across all industries the use of cloud-based services and applications is making perfect sense. In fact, small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) are turning to the cloud as a means to capitalise on digital, without the hefty capital expenditure and maintenance costs associated with IT infrastructure.
Research shows that 78% of businesses across SMB and enterprise segments globally already use one form of cloud service, with 75% planning to move more applications to the cloud in the future. While certainly a solid strategy – that can assist a business in being more flexible for growth and to remain focused on other important business goals – utilising cloud services, be it public, private or hybrid, doesn’t come without risks – particularly to data.
While there is large interest and planning to invest further in the cloud, the same research also indicates that 59% of both SMB and enterprise businesses feel that cloud hosted services (along with outsourcing) have the potential to introduce new risks to the IT security of their business. Despite these reservations however, many are still not taking cloud security seriously or putting procedures in place to scope their cloud environments with IT security in mind, to ensure business data is secure in the cloud. As a result of this, many businesses are finding themselves caught up in an untamed cloud data jungle that they have limited control and visibility of, leaving them wide open and vulnerable to possible cyberattacks.
Data protection is therefore one of the biggest concerns for cloud-adopters, with complex threats, opportunist ransomware, data theft, financial fraud and random human error among the ever-growing list of associated dangers. While cloud providers are working hard to improve the security and reliability of their cloud platforms, cloud-native security capabilities don’t always suit the demands of corporate systems. Banning or restricting certain applications, monitoring the ongoing behaviour of every application at work, and shielding systems from vulnerability exploitation are all crucial tasks that still remain the customer’s responsibility.
To circumvent this and minimise a situation that can leave a business unsecure, unprepared and potentially falling victim to cyberattacks, businesses must look to equip themselves with a security offering specifically designed for effective cloud protection.
Kaspersky Hybrid Cloud Security is such a solution, as it protects applications and data in physical, virtual and cloud workloads by building on Kaspersky Lab’s extensive experience in security for software-defined data centers. The solution provides multi-layered protection to multi-cloud environments. This means that wherever a business may process and store critical business data – be it a private or public cloud, or both – a perfectly balanced combination of agile, continuous security and superior efficiency are offered through this solution, resulting in the protection of data against the most advanced current and future threats, all without compromising on systems performance.
The solution also provides API-based integration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and supports the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, allowing users to extend security to every asset they put in the public cloud.
Considering how much valuable data is now stored in the cloud, it is critical for businesses to ensure they have holistic protection and visibility across all cloud platforms. A well-balanced blend of best-of-breed protection, resource efficiency, and enterprise-level orchestration capabilities for public and private cloud environments is what this solution offers.
Having the appropriate cloud security solution in place, that can scan for and path known vulnerabilities, can make a massive difference to whether malware or a threat causes massive disruption or damage, or if it is caught in time and before possible disaster strikes. Not focusing on, or, getting cloud security wrong can stop critical business functions and bring it to a standstill or could cause very real harm. All cloud environments need to be secure – and with the solutions available to support this, cloud security shouldn’t be keeping business decision makers up at night.
