An increasing number of organisations are shifting towards hybrid cloud environments and adopting containerisation technologies, resulting in a pressing need for enhanced cloud workload security solutions, according to a new study from Kaspersky and ISG.
The research involved surveying 310 enterprise leaders – including CISOs and CTOs – responsible for strategic technology investments across a wide range of industries spanning 12 countries. It has uncovered critical factors shaping the adoption of hybrid cloud and cloud-native technologies among enterprises. The key findings that emerged from this research include:
The adoption of hybrid cloud and containerisation technologies is accelerating
The survey underscores a rapid shift towards hybrid cloud environments and the widespread adoption of containerisation technologies. Almost every organisation is keen on enhancing its cloud-native capabilities, leveraging both on-premise and cloud infrastructures, and expanding containerised development strategies.
With 71% of organisations already using public cloud platforms and 96% planning to embrace cloud-native technologies in the next two years, the momentum is undeniable. Additionally, nearly three-quarters of organisations are preparing to embrace containerisation to adapt to dynamically changing workloads.
Security challenges are outpacing cybersecurity solutions
Despite the surge in cloud adoption, cybersecurity solutions are struggling to keep pace with the evolving security challenges associated with hybrid cloud and containerised environments. Half of the surveyed organisations still grapple with data security and compliance challenges – while investing in cloud workload security tools has emerged as a top priority for 54% of respondents.
Reflecting the increasing importance of cloud security measures, three out of five of the research respondents emphasise the urgency of monitoring and proactively addressing runtime misconfigurations of cloud assets. Additionally, 49% of participants anticipate persona-based reporting of threat profiles while 51% prioritise realtime solutions to track compliance violations and share alerts with security teams. Furthermore, over half of the respondents seek cloud workload security solutions with continuous monitoring and automated response capabilities.
Moreover, as containerisation gains traction, 51% of participants intend to invest in solutions for realtime tracking of container compliance violations and alerts – with 43% prioritising investments in shift-left security protocols.
The evolution of future-ready cloud workload security
According to the survey results, organisations transitioning to hybrid cloud environments and containerisation technologies would benefit from a comprehensive security solution. This solution should include constantly updated AI- and ML-powered predictive mechanisms that analyse user behaviour to detect and mitigate attacks and thus ensuring robust data protection policies.
A unified platform is essential, safeguarding endpoints, servers, and cloud workloads. This platform should encompass centralised identity management and cloud access security brokers (CASBs) to enhance security visibility and implement zero-trust security measures.
Furthermore, integrated customised threat intelligence feeds are crucial for hybrid cloud services – providing realtime, contextually rich threat route analysis within cloud environments including insights into threat origins, tactics, techniques, and procedures.
“Industry-specific cloud security solutions are recommended to meet unique requirements, ensuring seamless adherence to regulatory frameworks and optimising enterprises’ success in cloud computing initiatives,” says Anton Rusakov-Rudenko, product marketing manager, Cloud & Network Security Product Line at Kaspersky. “In response to the rapid adoption of new technologies we at Kaspersky have developed the Kaspersky Cloud Workload Security (Kaspersky CWS) ecosystem. Leveraging realtime threat intelligence data and ML algorithms, this ecosystem safeguards workloads across hosts, VMs, or containers – irrespective of deployment in private, public, or hybrid clouds.”