Managing the Public Cloud in 2020

infosecurity-magazine.com | February 11, 2020

Forrester Research recently announced it’s annual predictions for the year. Among visions of new treasures from the cloud-native development ecosystem and high-performance computing were two predictions that resonated with me; soaring growth for the public cloud market (to a staggering $299.4 billion) and a call for better security when it comes to cloud management.
While I see both having a big part to play in 2020, I couldn’t help but notice their respective security blindspots. The public cloud is crucial for modern organizations looking to digitally transform their business, yet security in that area remains a hurdle - particularly when it comes to web applications. With that increasing reliance on the cloud comes a need for significantly better cloud management. That being said, many organizations are only now waking up to the reality that the cloud is not a recreation of their personal environments and therefore requires a wholly different skillset to manage.To confirm our own suspicions surrounding the future of the public cloud we recently surveyed over 850 security professionals from around the world, most of whom agreed and demonstrated a growing confidence in public cloud deployments.
Almost half (44%) believed public cloud environments to be as secure as their on-premises setup, with one fifth (21%) believing them to be even more secure. A majority 60% agreed that they are either fairly or very confident that their public cloud environment is secure.

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