Organizations that had a digital transformation (DX) plan in place prior to the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic were already moving their workloads to modern architecture, such as the cloud. It is true that “everyone has a strategy until they get stuck in the mouth,” as Mike Tyson once said. This epidemic of Coronaviruses was a devastating blow to many organizations, and we can all agree on that. The scramble to migrate workloads to the cloud began almost immediately as timelines and budgets shrank. According to McKinsey, most organizations have expedited their internal digitalization by three to four years, and virtually all companies have deployed at least temporary solutions to fulfil many of the new demands on them.
Data security is the first to be compromised because of this rapid digital transition. This isn’t the first time in my nearly 30 years of working in this industry that security considerations have been overlooked, but they may be the most important. Every time a new version of a piece of software was released, security was always a bit behind schedule because security experts had to learn about the new environments and look for new attack avenues. However, we may not have the luxury of time any longer.
What’s Different This Time?
For a long time, securing new on-premises computer environments was a lot simpler since security teams could simply add resources and expand the security footprint. It was expensive, time-consuming, and labour-intensive, but that’s how it was done in the past.
The current acceleration has a few significant differences from the previous one. It is important to note that on-premises database security logging and monitoring solutions do not apply to cloud services. Because cloud-based services employ APIs and techniques that aren’t compatible with those of traditional databases, security teams can’t simply increase the size of their database security footprint to fix the problem. There is a greater learning curve than if we simply scaled up the security technologies that we were currently using because you need new tools for this new environment.
Bad actors know about the security gap because of the new cybersecurity world order. Even a decade ago, hacking was a thing, but there was only a small group of people actively involved in it. We imagined the threat as a lone “hoodie-wearing” kid in his or her parent’s basement, but most businesses were unconcerned. Hacking organizations that make money by exploiting companies that aren’t smart enough to invest in protecting their important data have shattered that view. When a corporation commits an error, hackers will be ready to take advantage of it. Your data is being scoured for vulnerabilities, both internally and outside, and they have a significant financial incentive, to the tune of millions, to exploit it. Covid’s storm is a treasure trove.
Cyberattacks will rise 20 percent in 2020, according to Fintech News, and Arkose Labs estimates that there will be 445 million attacks. Data leakage (the unlawful communication of data from within an organization to an external destination or recipient) was up by 43% in just the first three days of 2021, according to Imperva researchers. This was often the outcome of a breach.
Your organization’s incapacity to successfully respond to an assault is being exploited by the bad guys. Data breaches are already being priced into the risk models of business boards and Wall Street investors, according to a recent webinar on Data Security Trends. That’s how much faith has gone out the window.
However, this isn’t necessary. You have two options: either learn new cloud methods and APIs or locate technology that saves you from doing so.
Closing the Security Gap Requires Visibility
The first and most critical step in adopting any learning surroundings is to establish a basic layer of visibility. If you can’t see it, you can’t stop it. Visibility is the most important aspect of most security measures. It’s essential to know the “Six Ws” of your data to define some baseline behaviour: who is accessing it, what they’re doing with it, why they need it, where and when they’re accessing it, and whose servers are being used? It’s impossible to extend an access control policy without answers to these essential issues, leaving you vulnerable to data breaches. The “Six Ws” should also be kept in mind by businesses prior to moving to a new setting. If you have access to basic insight into your systems, it will make it much more difficult for criminals to gain access to your data and plug this glaring security hole.
Getting Ready for the Next Modernization Wave
Organizations must modernize in such a way that cloud-based workloads incorporate security measures. I believe we’re only a few years away from the point where security controls can be integrated directly into application stacks. If we’re successful, architecture and security can move forward in lockstep, rather than security being the last thing to be implemented. It’s possible that the next wave of modernization will reduce the amount of cleaning up we have to do, but for now, we must put within the manual effort to safeguard our data environments. The security gap must be closed, no matter how effective your security is already. But the first step is to have clear visibility into what’s going on. The capacity to run data through forensics if necessary and the ability to confirm entitlements, reduce them, and check for vulnerabilities from a surface area perspective can be added to a company’s security measures once adequate visibility has been created. Not everyone is aware of how to implement them in cloud-based systems and learning these techniques can help close the current security gap.
Read More:
Typical Start-Up Cybersecurity Mistakes
Prevent a Cyber Threat with a Cybersecurity Consultant
How to Create a Cybersecurity Culture in 5 Steps
