A recent survey by Deloitte unearthed the extraordinary fact that “only 5.8% of professionals in cloud-savvy organizations experienced slowdown due to COVID, compared to 16.4% among companies that plan to move to the cloud in 2021.”
In a fast changing world, those moving towards improved productivity, tooling, quality, and speed are far more adept to prosper in such times, and a dynamic and flexible cloud environment is perfectly suited for this.
Couple this with automation capabilities and it’s not hard to understand why executives are embracing cloud to further their operational effectiveness.
From the perspective of someone who has the privilege of speaking with security teams across the globe here at ThreatModeler, it is apparent that a significant uptick in cloud initiatives has taken hold since the advent of COVID. Who doesn’t want to launch new services with the simple click of a button? Why then is there disparity between organizations in terms of how far they have traveled the cloud migration path?
A wholly unscientific poll on LinkedIn may give a clue. When IT professionals were asked which were the most important considerations when moving to the cloud, data privacy and security far outweighed cost and provider.
Could it be that some are hesitant to embrace launching new cloud services with a simple click of the button because of security concerns? If so, who could blame them? Security teams are already overwhelmed and many traditional security practices are not fit for the new operational environment of cloud.
And security teams do not want to see a return to the days of security as an afterthought in the rush to migrate. This of course means building security in before leaping to the cloud. But there is still the lingering legacy of security being viewed as the blocker of speed and innovation.
Movements emphasizing “shifting security left” through “secure design” via threat modeling; and engineering security into the beginning of the development process, rather than at the end, have certainly helped ease some of the anxiety of security being a blocker in recent times. But this could become exacerbated once again as developers move to release new applications and features at eye-watering speed in the cloud through automated pipelines.
Healthcare IT News recently noted: “While cloud computing better optimizes the use of resources in healthcare, it also creates significant risks. This is especially true when cloud adoption happens faster than proper due diligence can be applied by information security personnel. This trend will persist well after the pandemic.”
For those responsible for securing the migration to cloud, with the concern that in the rush to cloud some security considerations may have fallen through the cracks, ThreatModeler has it covered with the Cloud Accelerator feature. With one click:
- Map and diagram pre-existing cloud environments
- Automatically threat model the components within
- Validate security controls are in place, with tracking and alerting for changes in the environment.
And for those in the planning stage of their migration or midway through, ThreatModeler comes complete with an onboard security architect to hold engineers by the hand and guide them down a secure path when designing cloud infrastructure.
The simple fact is, security needs to become part of this cloud world that embraces these automation processes. Many security teams are tackling this concept, talking and thinking in terms of automated security pipelines. Security needs to move at the same speed of cloud environments and to do so must be part of the same flow.
In this spirit, the Dedicated Threat Research Center at ThreatModeler has been studying these trends for years with a view to automate the threat modeling process in the cloud – or put another way – threat modeling with the simple click of a button. And with the Cloud Accelerator feature mentioned above, this capability is with us. ThreatModeler is already playing a key role in many organizations’ automated cloud security pipeline strategies.
So, with the cloud frontier upon us creating technological divides, there is absolutely no reason to delay or slow down making that move to cloud for security concerns. In fact, it’s time to accelerate the move to give the business the agility needed for these dynamic times and do so by putting security first without losing pace. ThreatModeler is the platform to make this a reality.
One Click Threat Modeling™ has arrived; be sure to engage with us to strategize your cloud security modernization and transformation journey.
To learn more about how ThreatModeler™ can help your organization build a scalable threat modeling process, book a demo to speak to a ThreatModeler expert today.