Misconfiguration is the number one cause of cloud security incidents in 2021

Their organizations continue to use the cloud, with 35% running more than 50% of their workload on Azure, AWS, and GCP, they struggle to manage the complexity of securing their cloud infrastructure across multiple cloud platforms, at the same time suffer from network-skills problems and a lack of knowledge.

This is one of the key findings from the 2022 Cloud Security Report from cybersecurity solution provider Check Point Software Technologies.

The global report, based on a survey of 775 cybersecurity experts, also revealed that cloud security incidents were up 10% year-over-year with 27% of current organizations saying the configuration was wrong, ahead of issues such as exposed data or account breaches.

Organizations are struggling to bring security into the DevOps cycle, plus the skills shortage that 45% of companies witness. Only 16% of respondents said they already have DevSecOps comprehensive, and 37% have just started implementing DevSecOps into their cloud application development process.

While finding cost savings and ease of use as the initial drivers of cloud provider security use, there is growing awareness that the complexity of managing three or four different security platforms argues in favor of an independent cloud security solution to streamline security across all. Cloud platform . In fact, 54% of those surveyed thought an independent security provider would be more suited to their needs than a cloud platform provider. An important consideration in making decisions between cloud originals and third-party security providers is the ability to reduce the complexity offered by an integrated solution, cited by 56% of respondents.

Adding to the complexity of multi-cloud security, respondents ranked data protection and privacy assurance for each environment at 57%, had the right skills to deploy and manage a complete solution across all cloud environments at 56%, and understood service integration options at 50%.

The demand for cloud application protection is increasing with this possibility increasing by 11% last year to become the third most concentrated sector, cited by 53% of survey samples. According to the report, 57% of respondents say they expect to run more than half of their workload in the cloud within the next 12 to 18 months, and of those, about 76% are using two or more cloud service providers.

As the speed of migration to the cloud increases, the ability to streamline cloud security becomes important, as 75% of organizations favor a single unified security platform with a single dashboard where they can configure all the policies needed to protect data in the cloud. Currently, 80% must combine three or more separate security solution dashboards to configure their enterprise cloud footprint.

TJ Gonen, vice president of cloud security at Check Point, said: “It’s clear from this independent survey that security teams are seeing the growing reliance on the cloud as a challenge. Faced with a lack of skills, organizations need to do everything they can to simplify their cloud security management. An integrated third-party solution that includes all cloud platforms with a single management dashboard will ease much of the pressure and reduce the risk of increasingly common misconfiguration, while reducing workloads and providing a secure environment for development, deploy and manage applications in the cloud. This is the main motivation for Check Point to develop its CloudGuard cloud security suite. ”