INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cloud
Professionals warn rapid
public cloud adoption opens
cybersecurity gap
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A
majority of European and Middle
East cybersecurity professionals
at organisations using DevOps
practices in the public cloud believe that their
organisations are trading speed for security.
In a newly published cloud security study
commissioned by global security leader,
Palo Alto Networks, 72% of cybersecurity
professionals indicated that the speed
of public cloud adoption is introducing
preventable security risks to software updates.
The DevOps model increases collaboration
between development and operations
teams, allowing for a fast-paced
approach to application creation and
enhancement. Organisations have adopted
this model to achieve faster application
delivery, enhanced innovation, more
stable operating environments and
performance-focused employee teams. Yet
as the DevOps model is enthusiastically
embraced, the survey findings indicate
that cybersecurity is being overlooked
and organisations may be vulnerable as a
result. Most notably:
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INTELLIGENTCIO
• There is concern among cybersecurity
professionals about whether cybersecurity
can match the speed and frequency of
how DevOps updates apps and services
in the public cloud. Only 47% of survey
respondents indicated that they are
confident that cybersecurity is working
well for DevOps teams operating in the
public cloud
• Only 22% of cybersecurity professionals
said they had a firm grasp on the risks and
needs that come with securing DevOps-
operated environments in the cloud
• Nearly three quarters (73%) report that
their organisations have either fully or
partly adopted DevOps development
in the public cloud. They are regularly
deploying and changing software, with
one in five doing many updates on a
weekly basis
As Greg Day, Vice President and CSO for
EMEA at Palo Alto Networks, explained:
“DevOps is proven to deliver strong results.
Rapid delivery of code, infrastructure and
data enables organisations to meet the
needs of their customers faster than ever
and stay ahead of their competition.
However, too often, the speed and
complexity of delivery has resulted in
traditional cybersecurity processes failing
to complete even rudimentary checks and
controls at the same rapid pace, resulting
in unnecessary risks. Indeed, we see
over half failing to meet basic password
management policies. Organisations won’t
wait for security teams to catch up, so they
must leverage native integration points and
automate their cybersecurity capabilities
to address the continuous and real-time
visibility and governance needed to keep
pace with DevOps practices.”
The Palo Alto Networks Security Operating
Platform enables organisations to
confidently deploy applications in the
cloud by preventing data loss and business
disruption. Palo Alto Networks customers
operating in hybrid and multi-cloud
environments benefit from a comprehensive
and consistent security offering that
integrates directly with cloud platforms. n
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