Distributed clouds will likely continue to grow in adoption due to the large volume of applications and IT assets in enterprise environments. However, complex networks like distributed clouds increase the surface area for security threats, which is not ideal for enterprise-scale organizations. Enterprises need to find new and innovative ways to mitigate these threats and make distributed clouds safer.
With accelerated digital innovation and transformation, enterprises face the rise of traffic volumes from data from employees, end-user and IoT devices, consumers, and partners. As a result, many big data and large-scale applications have outpaced the centralized data center infrastructure and the security teams who have to manage and maintain distributed clouds. Referred as the ‘next generation of cloud computing’ by Gartner, the distributed cloud is the first cloud model to include the physical location of cloud-delivered services.
But with more countries implementing data residency regulations, staying compliant is becoming increasingly problematic for enterprises. Therefore, the need for distributed cloud, which integrates effectively to the central cloud and enables enterprises to serve customers in various locations without affecting their system, has become crucial. This can help reduce a company’s spend on using multiple central clouds, building a hybrid cloud, or rebuilding data stacks.
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The distributed cloud brings plenty of impressive benefits to businesses, and enabling multi-cloud deployments is one of its greatest advantages. According to a Gartner report, about 75% of enterprise customers using cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) will adopt a deliberate multi-cloud strategy by 2022, up from 49% in 2017.
Distributed Cloud Security
Managing security in distributed clouds can be challenging. There are a lot more authorization controls, integration challenges, and dependencies than traditional cloud environments that organizations need to consider when it comes to distributed clouds.
Keeping data safe in distributed environments is not just about implementing established security controls. It requires a company-wide safety-first culture and the right team to ensure that security solutions in place can manage the entire distributed cloud network.
If organizations want their distributed clouds to succeed, they need to have robust security policies in place to safeguard their operations and the customers.
Securing the Distributed Cloud
A standard multi-cloud environment comprises multiple applications and modules with different characteristics. Organizations need to map out every asset and dependency that makes up distributed cloud environments. This can help improve visibility, which leads to tightened security and better cloud management.
Read More: The Need for Safeguarding IT Infrastructure in the New Normal
Rapidly increasing workloads require improved IT infrastructure scaling. Cloud resources are designed to be scalable, but, quite often; this ease of scaling can lead to organizations scaling too much without thinking of the side-effects.
Scaling cloud resources need equal expansion in security systems. If security measures are unable to keep up with the rate at which the cloud environment is growing, it will increase the attack surface for costly breaches. To avoid this problem, before expanding cloud environments, organizations need to consider the scalability of their security systems. Security applications also need to be integrated into the environment to maintain business continuity.
Automation is a must for distributed cloud management. Automating cloud security makes sense as many processes can be automated to great effect. Apart from the security aspect of it, AI and automation help enterprises speed up their operations, which contribute to faster time to market. Especially in today’s competitive landscape, delivering products quickly is crucial to keep up with consumer demand and adversaries.
