How can organisations best manage the cloud?

As businesses become increasingly reliant on the cloud, their confidence in compliance issues within the cloud has begun to waiver.

WinMagic recently conducted research to determine whether companies are getting the benefits they want from cloud technology and what, if anything, is holding them back from greater use.  The research exposed some interesting findings.  The role good security and compliance policies play in realising the business benefits were clear; 87% of IT decision makers (ITDMs) surveyed said they limit their use of the cloud because of the complexity of managing regulatory compliance. 

Compliance worries

Many companies fear compliance is balanced on a knife edge, and having a hybrid infrastructure with multiple cloud vendors heightens the risks of falling foul of regulatory requirements, such as those imposed under the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).  A quarter (24%) said, it meant as a result, they only work with a single cloud vendor in their infrastructure, rather than exploit the benefits multi-cloud environments can provide like cost effectiveness, flexibility, reliability, security and avoiding vendor lock-in.

The survey of ITDMs in Germany, India, the UK and US, conducted by Viga, noted that 63% felt the need to use multiple infrastructure management tools was also a hugely restricting factor in their use of multiple cloud vendors.  This is hardly surprising as, the more tools you have, the more complexity and points at which security and compliance processes can break down are introduced.  ITDMs realise this, with over a quarter (28%) stating they would “not be completely confident” IT systems met all the required processes and standards if an audit was called “today” and 7% went as far as to say there was “a high risk of them failing.”

But there are companies that manage to overcome these challenges by using platform-agnostic management tools.  When they do, it enables them to implement solid security and compliance policies across on-premises and cloud providers in a way that treats the hybrid infrastructure as a single composite unit over which encryption, access rights, data protection and data sprawl can be effectively and seamlessly managed.  That ability to take a holistic view of compliance increases confidence, and brings additional tangible business benefits:

•             63% improved the efficiency of their systems

•             57% now had enforced compliance across the infrastructure

•             56% say they are more secure

•             32% have made measurable cost savings

•             30% believe their risk exposure is lower

Security management

The pain caused by poor proprietary management tools, is leaving companies restricted on their infrastructure choices and places them at greater risk of regulatory fines.  But poor security compliance is so much more dangerous, putting company data at risk of data breaches, both accidental and through theft, by hackers or even employees.  The reality is that both are entwined – you cannot achieve good compliance without management tools that are fit for the purpose in mixed operating system, multi-cloud environments.

Good security management tools won’t just help you understand and visualise the overall estate, they’ll help you improve productivity and manage compliance through enforced encryption, virtual machine management, password controls and key management.  Critically, they will also enable the kind of reporting that will demonstrate that you are following the requirements of regulators and the law to the letter.

The most productive way to pursue a multi-cloud mixed infrastructure and achieve all the benefits that come with it, is to invest in tools that can manage the whole estate and ensure its security and compliance.  Proprietary tools often provide the best solution for the encryption of their platform, but you need to manage beyond the single vendor, and often their encryption solution simply falls flat on manageability of their keys.  You want the benefits of a multi-cloud mixed environment – by their very definition proprietary tools fall short of the task you need them to do.  And trying to navigate a collection of management tools will add to your IT burdens, inevitably leading to the kinds of human error that expose you to data breaches or audit failure, and keep you in a constant state of worry.  And, as we saw earlier, ITDMs say it halts the adoption of the very cloud technologies they want to exploit.

Is it worth it?

It is clear that the cloud is proving to be valuable to the enterprise.  In order to fix the issues stated, we need to address the management of mixed and multi-cloud infrastructures in order to address compliance woes.  This will give IT teams the confidence required to achieve the infrastructure desired, without compromise.