Digital transformation has transformed how organizations build, operate and secure their technology environments. The shift to cloud is also changing the security landscape with enterprises migrating from on-premises infrastructure platforms to cloud-based platforms. Outmoded perimeter defenses that anchored security strategies have transitioned to distributed models, covering users, applications and data dispersed across different cloud environments and geographic locations.
The ability to understand how security keeps pace with cloud adoption is a key competency in building an intelligent, future-ready organization. This change goes beyond technology; it marks a conceptual shift in how security is resourced and incorporated into business strategy.
From Perimeter to Cloud-Native Security
Traditional security models used to revolve around the idea of a trusted inside with an untrusted outside. Firewalls, intrusion detection/prevention systems, and other network controls were the organization’s answer to perimeter security. That model worked fairly well when data and applications were co-located on observably predictable, centralized infrastructure.
Cloud adoption disrupted this boundary. As workloads are migrated to public cloud platforms and as out-of-office employees using myriad applications access these from outside the confines of any static network perimeter, an inside vs. Applications run in many cloud regions and users connect from their own devices, roaming on unmanaged networks. The perimeter, the security wall of yesteryear, is an unrealized post-Mandiant world.
This reality gave rise to cloud-native security models. Instead of a static perimeter that requires defending, these models are focused on identity, workloads, and data security no matter where they reside. Access decisions are contextual and not dependent upon where a User or Device is situated. They are the actual limits and security controls of the cloud architecture, not what’s bolted on around it.
Why Digital Transformation Justifies Investment in Security
Here again, digital transformation initiatives tend to increase the attack surface that organizations need to defend. Cloud migrations, application modernization programs, SaaS adoption, and third-party service integrations all open new potential attack surfaces that adversaries can compromise. For each new integration, API or service dependency, is a place where security controls should be added.
The convergence of cloud services and security evolving together has become a defining feature of mature digital transformation programs. Organizations that treat security as an afterthought during transformation projects often find themselves managing security debt a backlog of vulnerabilities and unaddressed risks that accumulate as technical decisions were made without adequate security review.
The best organizations overcome this by integrating security requirements directly into transformation roadmaps. Cloud design decisions are made with the earliest input from security architects and instead of performing a final gate check on security testing before production, it is integrated into the normal development and deployment pipelines.
Identity As The Control Plane
Now identity has become the primary mechanism to enforce security policy for cloud environments. Nearly every security control that matters today in a cloud architecture is driven from the question of “who or what is trying to access this resource, and should they be allowed to under the current conditions?”
Identity and access management (IAM) has transitioned from an administrative set of tools to a strategic capability that is focused on security. Multi-factor authentication, privileged access management, and just-in-time access provisioning are now de facto standards. Simultaneously, machine identities (the service accounts and API keys used to facilitate communication between cloud services, as well as workload credentials) have increased dramatically to become a major yet typically under-secured component of the identity attack vector.
A cloud security suite from organizations conducting Digital Transformation must evolve to comprehensive visibility of human and machine identities across their cloud. Unique identities, which are over-provisioned, stale or poorly managed, provide lateral movement opportunities when an attacker gains a foothold.
The Adoption of Zero Trust Principles in Cloud Security
This move towards new cloud environments has driven the adoption of a zero trust principle as a security foundation. Zero trust principles verify explicitly, least privilege access and assume breach are an ideal fit for cloud deployments that cannot depend on perimeter controls.
Tracking developments in emerging cloud security trends shows that multi-cloud security strategies, secure access service edge adoption, and zero trust architecture are converging as enterprises seek unified approaches to securing distributed environments. These trends reflect a broader recognition that cloud security cannot be handled through isolated point solutions; it requires an integrated architecture that enforces consistent policy across all environments.
Learning how zero trust security model analytics effectively translates these principles into action enables organizations to implement a journey from reactive responding to threats as they come up to proactive, by validating access all of the time while making use of segmentation and least privilege enforcement to minimize successful breach explosion.
Securing the Multi-Cloud Environment
Most cloud-native organizations have more than one provider. The ultimate multi-cloud strategy wherein workloads are spread across two or more cloud platforms has become common as organizations attempt to avoid vendor lock-in, attain cost savings and gain access to off-the-shelf specialized services. Security programs must adapt to the complexity introduced by multi-cloud environments.
Different cloud platforms have their security tooling, configuration model and compliance controls specific to themselves. Security teams need visibility and policy enforcement in all of these environments concurrently. According to the findings of one recent report, misconfiguration is among the top 3 causes of cloud security incidents, and the risk increases significantly when teams have to manage multiple platforms with different interfaces and frameworks.
Tools for centralized visibility as well as cloud security posture management capabilities give organizations a way to be able to keep ubiquitous oversight across their multi-cloud deployments. The tools constantly monitor cloud configurations against established policies, assess their current state with one or more security standards and notify users when anything changes – i.e., drift occurs. In fast moving organizations, automated posture management minimizes the chance that security controls will lag behind in the pace of change within the environment.
DevSecOps and Shift-Left Security Model
These digital transformation programs are often focused on modernizing how applications are developed. We used agile development and built continuous integration and delivery pipelines that allow organizations to release software much quicker than traditional models. Both an opportunity and a security risk at that speed.
But as we know, shift-left security practices push security testing and controls earlier in the development lifecycle so that vulnerabilities are identified and addressed before code is deployed vs. after. The security scanning tools are integrated into their development pipelines, and as soon as any developer introduces a piece of code that could lead to security issues.
DevSecOps the insertion of security into DevOps workflows is the organizational model that makes this shift possible. Security must be a joint effort between security teams and development teams, with mutual accountability for security results, paired tooling that helps make security part of regular development activity. While digital transformation helps organizations to mature their cloud practices, DevSecOps adoption is often considered a proxy for that maturity.
Frequently Asked Questions
Digital Transformation: What does it mean for an organization’s security needs?
Digital Transformation increases the attack surface with a variety of cloud workloads, integrations with third party applications and dispersed user bases. This means security has to move from perimeter-based models to identity-centric, cloud-native approaches that apply policy everywhere users or data are. Investment in security has to match the velocity of transformation.
How do Cloud and zero trust security relate to each other?
Traditional security models relied on a fixed network perimeter which exists in traditional environments, where the concept of zero trust is especially meaningful since there is no longer a set point of connection thanks to cloud adoption. Since zero trust relies on continuous verification of access requests rooted in identity, device posture and context, it provides an ideal framework for security across the distributed, dynamic nature of cloud where location cannot establish trust.
Why is identity management relevant at a higher level in cloud security?
In cloud environments, identity remains the most important control point for making access decisions. The management, monitoring, and governance of human identities as well as machine identities service accounts and API credentials One of the most common targets for attackers to move laterally through your cloud environment and a leading cause of serious cloud security incidents are over-privileged, stale or moderately managed identities.
