By Grant Asplund, Check Point Growth Technologies Evangelist
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
Two years ago, I published Some Things Are Unavoidable: Death, Taxes, and Using Cloud and after looking back at the article, I realized much has changed, and so much has remained the same.
So, what’s different?
For starters, we’ve all suffered through a global pandemic. The effects and consequences of the forced changes to our business operations and specifically, to how we deliver and enable access to information systems, will stay with us indefinitely.
At least 80% of company leaders plan to allow employees to work remotely at least part of the time after the pandemic and 47% will allow employees to work from home full-time. This shift has accelerated the adoption and use of public clouds. The worldwide public cloud computing market is continuing to grow and total spending for 2021 is expected to surpass $332 billion.
Another change is that enterprises are reporting a significant increase in cyber attacks. Since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, 58% of companies have experienced an increase in attacks. As a result, according to a Check Point survey conducted at the end of 2020, the top three priorities for organizations will be:
- Securing remote workers
- Investing in endpoint and mobile security technologies
- Hardening public and multi-cloud environments
The changing threat landscape
The changed landscape dictated the need to quickly enable work-from-home remote access. In the immediate aftermath of this shift, little attention was paid to security.
And, in parallel with the operational changes and re-prioritization that took place in 2020, organizations were faced with the most significant and far-reaching supply chain attacks ever seen. This cyber pandemic has challenged our confidence in the very systems we rely on to maintain our IT infrastructures.
And, what has not changed?
First and foremost, we need to protect you from you, meaning that organizations require what is now referred to as Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM).
At least 95 percent of all cloud failures will be the user’s fault. A continuous CSPM as the foundational layer in order to build a public cloud data center that is more secure than your on-premise data center can prove essential.
According to available data, somewhere around 90% of businesses use public cloud technology. Crystal-clear visibility, unified reporting, continuous compliance and security enforcement across multiple public cloud environments are must-haves.
What else hasn’t changed
The ever-increasing, non-stop phishing attacks and ransomware attacks. As we’ve moved to a remote working model, the attackers ramped up efforts. “The world [now] faces over 100,000 malicious websites and 10,000 malicious files daily. 87% of organizations have experienced an attempted exploit of an already-known, existing vulnerability,” reported Forbes.
So, I’m reminded of what my grandpa used to tell me: “The one thing we know for sure is nothing stays the same,” but he passed away before the age of the internet. Today, he’d probably modify it to say, “The one thing we know for sure is nothing stays the same…except ever-increasing, non-stop cyber attacks.”
