Keeping The Cloud Secure and Resilient in Challenging Times

During this pandemic global economies are facing the dual challenge of preserving global health while dealing with the economic consequences. Business stability and continuity have been crucial, especially for companies that operate with mission-critical applications and data.

Certain processes, workloads, applications, and data are said to be ‘mission-critical’ in the business world when their continuity, integrity, and security are vital to the basic operation of a business. In fact, when Forrester Consulting recently surveyed businesses across the world about their multi-cloud systems, more than half responded that applications dealing with customer, financial, and sensitive data were mission-critical.

The COVID-19 pandemic, on the other hand, has demonstrated that the notion of mission-critical has swiftly mutated and escalated. Previously mission-critical IT procedures in industries such as healthcare, shipping, and manufacturing have become more vital than ever since the world banded together to save lives and secure the economy. And, with the majority of the world’s workforce planning to continue to work remotely in the future, the importance of enhanced levels of security, connectivity, and access to company data only increases. As enterprises adopt different approaches to keep their business operations sustainable in the face of uncertainty, they evolve and rise stronger- maintaining systems and applications functioning efficiently and securely in the cloud will be critical for business.

Also Read: Better Cloud Security Strategy with Data Science

The real-world requirements for IT service stability and availability

Several industries have been put under much more pressure to assure service continuity. Naturally, with rising workloads and resources under pressure, healthcare providers’ mission-critical apps and patient data have become more vital than ever. Similarly, key manufacturers, logistics firms, and others continue to confront increasing demands and tight timelines in order to produce and deliver critical products and services to other organizations.

Enterprises of all sizes have built their businesses on key software such as SAP. These are mission-critical workloads that, in many circumstances, require near-zero downtime, such as railway and metro systems, air travel, banking, pharmaceutical research, and healthcare, to mention a few.

In fact, according to a 2020 Statista survey, enterprise downtime can cost a business anywhere from $300,000 to $5,000,000 per hour.

The margin for error in IT is typically miniscule. In the aftermath of increased cyber-attacks, it is critical to know that any disruption can have a devastating impact on the firm, ranging from reputational harm to possibly massive financial losses. Cloud services must be purpose-built to meet stringent uptime SLAs while also protecting sensitive data.

The industry’s understanding of the mission-critical environment has Grown

IT teams have faced a massive challenge in ensuring that employees are capable and productive at their remote work environments. It can be difficult to provide easy access to mission-critical, cloud-based applications and data.

Also Read: Have Enterprises Established a Holistic Cloud Security Ability?

In fact, according to a 2020 Forrester Consulting study, the majority of respondents host mission-critical applications in several cloud environments today, with 94% of those firms reporting deployment or continuing management challenges linked to their multi-cloud environments. To combat this, having the right expertise to maximize the benefits of multi-cloud deployments is critical, whether by adding internal staff with specific multi-cloud experience or seeking out cloud-managed services providers with deep expertise across multi-cloud deployments and mission-critical applications.

The importance of technology in humanity’s efforts to address the problems that face our planet cannot be overstated. The race for treatments and vaccines has received a lot of attention, but the IT backbones of organizations around the world have been equally important in keeping hospitals open, governments running, factories producing vital supplies, financial institutions stable, and communications services humming throughout this period of uncertainty.