Cybersecurity chief obstacle to cloud modernisation, IT leaders say

The revelations surface following a study into cloud modernisation conducted by cyber-attack detection and response company, Confluera, which conversely found that 84% of IT leaders are optimistic about their firms’ cybersecurity posture as we move through the New Year.

Showcasing the views of 200 US IT chiefs in medium-to-large-sized enterprises, Confluera’s “2022 Cloud Cybersecurity Survey Report” shines a light onto how IT teams are tackling the increasingly complex remote, cloud-centric IT security landscape.

The majority of organisations are accelerating their cloud adoption with the vast majority (97%) of IT leaders surveyed stating that their strategy includes the expansion of cloud deployments. The strategy includes expansion in scale and in many cases, the adoption of multiple platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud and Azure. This strategy is not without its challenges, however.

Approximately, 63% of IT professionals identified cyber-threats designed to target cloud services as the top obstacle to their cloud strategy.

Cloud and multi-cloud adoption has greatly increased the workload of already burdened IT teams. Of the 200 IT leaders surveyed, only about half of the respondents said that they are adequately staffed to manage the frequency of alerts they receive. IT teams spend 54% of their time investigating security alerts, with over half of those alerts turning out to be false or benign alarms.

As threats within the cloud proliferate, IT leaders are looking for solutions to help them quickly separate the signal from the noise so they can act on the real threats promptly. Among key report findings, more than 65% of IT leaders said cloud IaaS adoption (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, etc.) was the primary contributor to their increased workload in 2021.

When asked what challenges were associated with adopting multiple cloud platforms,

69% cited maintaining consistent cybersecurity coverage across all cloud infrastructures, nearly half (50%) said that securing the resources to manage different cloud infrastructures was the issue, while nearly 45% identified the difficulty detecting threats progressing from one cloud infrastructure to another.

John Morgan, CEO of Confluera, said:

“While accelerated cloud adoption continues to be a critical element in adapting to the new way of doing business, it has strained IT leader’s ability to manage their workload.

“Organisations need to ensure proper people, processes, and tools are in place for the team to expand the complex cloud environments without sacrificing their attention to security,” Morgan added.

“To make matters worse, the Great Resignation has demonstrated the burnout that workers across the US economy are feeling, and nowhere is this burnout more obvious than in the cybersecurity teams. Organisations must ensure frequent conversations between executives and cybersecurity managers to ensure they are well equipped to adequately manage alerts, maintain systems, and avoid burnout within their teams,” Morgan continued.

Not all findings in the report were downcast, however. In a positive sign, 84% of IT leaders were optimistic about their cybersecurity readiness for 2022.

The majority of respondents noted the availability of new cybersecurity tools as the reason for their positive outlook, with 59% saying that a Detection and Response solution for the cloud, or CxDR, is the innovation they are most excited about for future deployment.

Morgan concluded:

“2021 was a tough year for many IT leaders, but the market is now providing organizations with the tools they need to effectively manage the infrastructures they have and even expand them further. Given proper resources and effective communication, IT leaders have every right to be positive as we move into the new year.”