90% of organisations globally cannot detect, contain and resolve cyber threats within the first hour

The adoption of hybrid work during the pandemic has led organisations across the world to expand digital footprint and move their operations to the cloud by more than 25 per cent. This has made application security more complex, resulting in a majority of them struggling to automate cloud security and mitigate risks, while putting pressure on the security team of the organisation. As a result, 90 per cent of organisations cannot detect, contain and resolve cyber threats within an hour, states the 2023 State of Cloud Native Security Report by Palo Alto Networks.

Highlighting the challenges of moving to the cloud, one of the top concerns that continue is the struggle with comprehensive security, compliance, and technical complexity. Around 78 per cent of organisations surveyed said they had distributed responsibility for cloud security to individual teams, but almost half (47 per cent) said most of their workforce does not understand their security responsibilities.

Of the various security tools available, organizations also struggle to identify which security tools are necessary to achieve their objectives. This has led many of them to implement single-point solutions. As a result, an average organisation is using more than 30 security tools, including six to 10 that are dedicated to cloud security. Even this sheer number of security tools makes it difficult for leaders to have in-depth visibility into their entire cloud portfolio. And using multiple security tools creates blind spots that affect their ability to prioritize safety and prevent threats.

Also, as more applications are being built in the cloud using off-the-shelf software, there’s a risk that any vulnerability in the development process could compromise an entire application later on. Because of this, companies are encouraging a deeper level of engagement between application developers and security tools and teams. Organizations are embedding security professionals inside their DevOps teams.

Some organisations are making cloud infrastructure a strategic focus across the business. Hence, cloud security will also be a clear enabler of business outcomes.  Ankur Shah, senior vice president, Prisma Cloud, Palo Alto Networks says “As cloud adoption and expansion continue, organizations need to adopt a platform approach that secures applications from code to cloud across multi-cloud environments.”

As companies reported weak security postures, they need to improve their underlying activities — from gaining visibility into multiple clouds to applying more consistent governance across accounts to streamlining incident response and investigation.

Also Read: How a Multi-cloud Environment Can Ease an Enterprise’s Digital Transformation Journey

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