Cloud security monitoring helps organizations detect and respond to threats, vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, compliance violations, and incidents in their cloud environments.
Cloud security monitoring is becoming more important and challenging as organizations adopt cloud services at an increasing rate and face new and evolving risks in the cloud. According to Gartner, 92% of organizations currently host their IT environment in the cloud, but with major advantages follow some critical security threats.
In this article, we will explore some of the key trends and developments that will shape the cloud security monitoring landscape in 2023 and beyond.
Trend 1: Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
One of the main challenges of cloud security monitoring is the lack of visibility and control over the configuration and status of cloud resources and services. Misconfiguration, lack of visibility, identity, and unauthorized access are among the highest-ranked cloud threats, according to a survey by Oracle and KPMG.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) is a solution that helps organizations address this challenge by continuously assessing and improving their cloud security posture. CSPM tools automate the discovery and remediation of cloud misconfigurations, enforce security policies and best practices, provide compliance assurance, and generate reports and dashboards for visibility and accountability.
CSPM is expected to grow in demand and adoption this year, as organizations realize the benefits of proactive and preventive cloud security monitoring. According to Gartner, by 2024, 80% of cloud breaches will be due to customer misconfiguration, mismanaged credentials or insider theft, which CSPM tools can help prevent or mitigate.
Trend 2: Data Protection Before It Reaches the Cloud
Another challenge of cloud security monitoring is ensuring the protection of sensitive data that is stored or processed in the cloud. Data loss and leakage are among the top cloud security concerns in 2021, according to a report by Netwrix.
Data protection in the cloud involves encrypting data at rest and in transit, applying access controls and permissions, implementing data loss prevention (DLP) policies, and monitoring data activity and anomalies. However, these measures may not be enough to prevent data breaches or comply with data privacy regulations.
Therefore, some organizations are adopting a more proactive approach to data protection by encrypting or anonymizing data before it reaches the cloud. This way, they can reduce the risk of exposing sensitive data to unauthorized parties or compromising their data sovereignty.
One example of this approach is Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) encryption, which allows organizations to use their own encryption keys to encrypt data before sending it to the cloud. This gives them more control over their data security and access. However, BYOK encryption also requires careful management of the encryption keys and compatibility with the cloud service providers.
Trend 3: Digital Supply Chain Risk Management
The digital supply chain refers to the network of vendors, partners, suppliers, and customers that provide or consume digital products or services. The digital supply chain can introduce new risks for cloud security monitoring, as attackers can exploit vulnerabilities or compromise third-party components or services to gain access to target systems or data.
The SolarWinds breach in 2020 was a prominent example of a digital supply chain attack that affected thousands of organizations worldwide. The attackers inserted malicious code into a software update from SolarWinds, a network management software provider, which then infected its customers’ systems.
To prevent or mitigate such attacks, organizations need to adopt a holistic approach to digital supply chain risk management. This involves identifying and assessing the risks associated with their digital supply chain partners, implementing security standards and controls for third-party access and integration, monitoring their digital supply chain activity and performance, and responding to incidents or alerts promptly.
Trend 4: Vendor Consolidation
The cloud security monitoring market is fragmented and complex, with many vendors offering different products and services for various aspects and layers of cloud security. This can create challenges for organizations such as interoperability issues, redundant features, inconsistent policies or vendor lock-in. Therefore, some organizations are looking for more integrated and comprehensive solutions for cloud security monitoring that can reduce complexity, cut costs, and improve efficiency. This leads to a trend of vendor consolidation where vendors merge, acquire, or partner with other vendors
to offer more complete
and unified platforms for cloud security monitoring
Some examples of vendor consolidation in the cloud security monitoring space are:
- Elastic acquired Build.Security a policy-as-code platform for authorization management in August 2021
- Datadog acquired Sqreen, a web application security platform in February 2021
- New Relic acquired Pixie Labs, a Kubernetes observability platform in December 2020
Vendor consolidation can offer benefits for organizations such as:
- Simplified procurement and management of cloud security monitoring tools
- Enhanced visibility and correlation across multiple sources and types of data
- Improved scalability and performance of cloud security monitoring solutions
However, vendor consolidation can also introduce some challenges such as:
- Reduced negotiating power and flexibility with vendors
- Potential single points of failure or compromise in case of vendor breaches or outages
- Increased dependency on vendor support or updates
Summary
Cloud security monitoring is a vital function for organizations that use cloud services for their IT operations and business processes. Cloud security monitoring helps organizations detect and respond to threats, vulnerabilities, misconfigurations compliance violations, and incidents in their cloud environments.
However, cloud security monitoring is also evolving rapidly as organizations face new and emerging risks in the cloud. Some of the key trends that will shape the cloud security monitoring landscape in this year are:
- Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
- Data Protection Before It Reaches the Cloud
- Digital Supply Chain Risk Management
- Vendor Consolidation
Organizations need to be aware of these trends and adapt their strategies, tools, processes and skills accordingly to ensure effective efficient and secure cloud security monitoring in this year and beyond.