Palo Alto Networks, a global cybersecurity leader, has published its 2023 State of Cloud-Native Security Report. The report surveyed more than 2,500 C-level executives around the world to better understand their cloud adoption strategies and how those strategies are working.
With organisations of all sizes moving more of their operations to the cloud, a majority are struggling to automate cloud security and mitigate risks. It’s one reason many companies are trying to improve security earlier in the development process and looking for fewer vendors offering more security capabilities.
Cloud use has grown, along with security concerns: The expansion of hybrid work during the pandemic drove organisations to expand their use of clouds by more than 25%. As a result, DevOps teams are being pressed to deliver production code at warp speed – making application security more complex and putting pressure on security organisations to keep pace.
Most organisations are slow to detect and respond to threats: 90% of organisations we surveyed said they cannot detect, contain and resolve cyberthreats within an hour. Bad actors are working just as fast as developers to take advantage of organisations’ vulnerabilities. Detecting threats in real-time represents the new frontier of cloud security.
Teams don’t understand their security responsibilities: When asked about the challenges of moving to the cloud, respondents’ top concerns remained unchanged from our 2020 report: struggles with comprehensive security, compliance and technical complexity.
A greater need for code-to-cloud security: 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. That’s why more companies are encouraging a deeper level of engagement between application developers and security tools and teams.
Moving towards consolidation: Three-quarters of the leaders we surveyed say they struggle to identify which security tools are necessary to achieve their objectives. This has led many of them to implement numerous single-point solutions – with the average organisation using more than 30 security tools, including six to 10 dedicated to cloud security.
The sheer number of security tools makes it difficult for leaders to have in-depth visibility into their entire cloud portfolio.
A clear path forward: Despite the upheaval caused by the pandemic, organisations have mostly been able to succeed in their cloud expansions – those that made cloud infrastructure a strategic focus across the business were generally more successful. This makes cloud security a clear enabler of business outcomes.
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