Cloud technology has now become an environmentally-friendly storage solution and an incredible platform to produce and leverage data. It has the efficiency to fulfil enterprise dreams by redesigning and reshaping business models without compromising its flexibility.
Today, businesses across all sectors are becoming more distributed and can run their enterprise operations without any geographical restrictions. Due to the Covid-19 outbreak, many organizations have also started working remotely, making the workforce even more distributed. Therefore, cybersecurity threats and data breaches are now a serious issue across the world.
This new working model now requires businesses to depend on cloud infrastructure and services more than before. So, improving cloud security has become a vital task to protect data and prevent unauthorized access of network hackers.
This article will discuss these emerging trends in cloud security innovation, and how they can enhance enterprise security.
Zero-Trust Network Access ( ZTNA)
The abrupt shift to remote work has created new challenges for cybersecurity worldwide. It revealed some vulnerable areas in this distributed working model where cybersecurity attacks have increased by 47%.
As a result, many companies have realized that their traditional network security infrastructure is not enough to prevent cyberattacks and hackers in these changed virtualized environments. Here’s where the Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) policy comes in.
With this zero-trust approach, no user, network, device, or workload is trusted unless verified by ZTNA. It enables organizations to regulate access to systems, networks, and data without abandoning control.
Serverless Computing
Serverless is an operational model in cloud computing that began with AWS Lambda. It is one of the latest and also some of the most complex computation models. Serverless computing is also called Functions-as-a-Service (FAAS).
Using this technology model, organizations can run their cloud operations without setting up any long-lived servers. In the traditional cloud computing model, cloud service providers provide virtual servers to free companies from using their physical servers. But in the serverless model, the server itself is abstract.
However, as it’s a pure service-based approach, this new trend also has some security concerns. Serverless service runs its tasks on shared infrastructure, which could create a data breach threat.
Moreover, the difficulties in serverless sometimes suggest that it is not yet ready for full-fledged enterprise cloud operation.
In the meantime, businesses need to add some additional security layers to improve and implement serverless technology that also develop cloud security.
Application of AI and ML in Cloud Security
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are now integral parts of cybersecurity development. Due to the rapid spread of cloud technology, companies are using AI and ML to create new solutions and tools that save time and reduce human error.
As a highly specialized field, businesses often find a workforce shortage in the cybersecurity world, meaning it can be difficult to provide the necessary protection for their high-demand cloud services. So, AI and ML are also becoming essential to protect cloud security and prevent unauthorized data breaches.
Confidential Computing
Confidential computing is a cloud computing technology that separates and encrypts sensitive data within a protected CPU area during processing. As business leaders depend on public and hybrid cloud services, data privacy is an ultimate necessity.
For years, cloud service providers have provided data encryption services to secure data ‘at rest’ (in storage or a database) and data ‘in transit’ (shifting data through a network connection). Confidential computing removes the gap and enhances data protection by adding data ‘in use’ (encrypting data during processing). This continues to be paramount in cloud security moving forward.
DevOps Secure Automation
With the increasing demand for efficiency, DevOps are becoming more automated; it’s no longer just about development and operations. Companies that use DevOps want to enable more IT security in it to keep consistent productivity. This is what they call DevSecOps.
In the DevOps approach, software and feature releases occur in real-time. So unlike before, security is now included in the end-to-end distributed responsibility for the DevOps team. DevSecOps automates these security processes to run DevOps workflows smoothly, meaning that organizations can focus less on network security issues and more on their development tasks.
Final Thoughts
Despite having many obstacles, we hope that the coming years will be a revolutionary time in cloud security developments. After the pandemic, as more and more enterprise operations are becoming remote, new business challenges and security threats will also arise.
For example, network giant Cisco is quickly transforming its businesses into a more digital form. Due to this rapid digitalization, the esteemed organization needs to look for more robust and secure cloud solutions, creating the opportunity for more innovation in this area. Cybersecurity will doubtless play an important role in cloud computing development for protected enterprise operations.
Our software engineers, network engineers, and researchers are now faced with the challenge of tackling brand new, growing security issues, building and growing to make cloud solution models more secure, robust and effective for future business operations.
What do you see in the future of cloud technologies? Have you seen any security innovations that inspired you? Join the conversation in the comments!
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