A growing number of enterprises are adopting the multi-cloud strategy to move out from the monotonous cloud providers. Avoiding the over-reliance on the single vendor to reduce the threats like distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. It also improves the cost efficiency, server performance optimization and improving the up-time with varied products for different services. Moving from the single cloud strategy towards the multiple cloud benefits provides a complete end to end solution when dealing with digital services and product development. Stabilizing the products/ service offers the enterprises to gain the required benefit of flexibility and using the varied offerings to suit the specifications. The multi-cloud offers the benefits of structuring the workloads in separate environments in order to stay relevant to the business goals and policies. Enterprises are fast moving towards the digital transformations and adopting varied cloud strategy to stay relevant with the offerings and services. The deployment in the number of multi-cloud is also rising rapidly among digital aware organizations. Accepting various cloud offering in the operational framework such as Automation, and BYOD along with scalable technology that can be integrated Artificial Intelligence, the blockchain, and IoT. According to the recent survey of the enterprises that are using the cloud-based services to improve their digital offerings, 75 percent of the organizations deploy two or more cloud-based services, while 84 percent will soon be expanding their cloud usage.
Restructuring the Security
Various tools are available that can actually implement the multi-cloud strategy to improve the environment, with benefits of deployment and operation, while we still see many challenges that remain a barrier for the strategy. Security is the primary challenge that the enterprises are facing during deployment of the cloud strategy, with a demand for an adequate number of policies and tools that need to be developed for a multiple cloud strategy. The major barrier is to keep the offerings- products/ services and the data safe. Data operations are usually critical for the business growth and the reason many of the enterprises are actually adopting the different cloud vendors and the third party tools for securing the data access.
Primarily there are three key factors that will be necessary for the enterprises wanting to harness the benefits of the multi-cloud strategy with the adoption of security:
Reality of Cloud
Cloud has broken the traditional model of data management and security even with the multiple cloud strategy such traditional model completely fail. Even with the shift from legacy policies of work structure enterprises are shifting from the controlled system data access towards the mobility solutions that have an ability to access the data from any location, any device at any time. It also means the enterprise data will actually be flowing through the infrastructure that is adopted from any of other third-party providers. So as the data moves from the legacy infrastructure towards the cloud data centers- the access to the data and the infrastructure for the access is controlled by the third party providers.
All of the enterprises those who have adopted cloud need to deal with security threats from the personal devices and the off-premise networks. As the companies started to move the data from the on-premises environment to the cloud solutions, they must address the cloud specific threats and vulnerabilities. The cloud services adoption increased for enterprises the monitoring of the data flow can become a major challenge, however, dealing with management functions such as visibility and control over the information can also be imperative. Enterprises need to reconsider how to protect the devices under cyber threats such as malware attacks. Inducting tools that can improve the security features of the cloud to improve the device health accessing the data and also a real-time security cover for the infrastructure. Every multiple cloud strategy will need a unique security solution to make the total infrastructure reliable.
Visibility and Control Over the Data
Many of the cloud services providers’ come with a built-in security feature that offers some degree of visibility and control. All the providers offer security policies that can be customized according to the individual needs but they are mostly implemented towards complete cloud security. Many of the organizations that want to implement the required infrastructure with security rely primarily on the tools and policies provided by the cloud providers crippling the system. However, many of the organizations find it problematic to deal with already specified solutions. For example, consider many of the healthcare providers have started using the protected health information (PHI) will need to add new policies that will identify the sensitive data platforms and also controlling the access to the data.
Native security tools should result in the reduction of massive manual tasks that need to be added or edited according to each data requirements depending on the application and software. The scenario is currently being complicated by further requirements of solutions for the security features. To address such barriers, single solutions that can deliver complete visibility and deliver control across for all their applications.
Policies & Governance
The move towards the multi-cloud environment from the on-premises environment doesn’t actually mean that you need to discard the already set policies and security solutions. It will require different transformation techniques that will embark different strategies and also need comprehensive data protection, threat protection, visibility, and identity management to prevent unauthorized access to the data. To ensure a complete solution that provides comprehensive protection, the security solutions selected must be easy to deploy and integrate with already existing on-premises tools. It will also mean continuous and consistent security accesses the enterprises no matter where exactly does the data go. Such advanced solutions will also need to be able enough that the technology changes will make it more reliable and beneficent without completely building a new solution.
Conclusion
Real-time security solutions and implanting the governance policies for the multi-cloud strategy will be effective techniques for securing the infrastructure. Though the solution and policy will defer from the enterprises to enterprises and the need for solutions will reframe the security strategies in the future.
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