76% of Security Pros Admit Securing Their Cloud Environments Is a Struggle

• Most security professionals have difficulty maintaining security configurations in the cloud
• 22% still assess their cloud security posture manually
• Security pros confess they need more automated enforcement

Organizations face shortcomings in monitoring and securing their cloud environments, according to a survey of 310 security professionals.

Some 76% of security professionals in the survey conducted by Dimensional Research for Tripwire said they have difficulty maintaining security configurations in the cloud. 37% said their risk-management capabilities in the cloud are worse than other parts of their environment, and 93% confessed they were concerned about human error accidentally exposing their cloud data.

Malicious actors typically run automated searches to find exposed cloud instances containing sensitive data, making it critical for organizations to monitor their cloud security on a recurring basis and plug holes quickly and efficiently, researchers said. Yet only 21% of organizations assess their overall cloud security posture in real time or near real time, the study found.

And while 21% said they conduct weekly evaluations, 58% do so only monthly or less frequently. Despite widespread worry about human errors, 22% still assess their cloud security posture manually, researchers found.

Most organizations use a framework for securing their cloud environments (i.e. CIS, NIST) but only 22% said they can maintain continuous cloud security compliance over time. More than 90% of organizations have implemented some level of automated enforcement in the cloud yet security pros confessed they need more automated enforcement.

Only 51% have automated solutions that ensure proper encryption settings are enabled for databases or storage buckets and 45% automatically assess new cloud assets as they are added to the environment. 51% have automated alerts with context for suspicious behavior, which is an encouraging sign.

Organizations often lack either skills or tools to achieve proper cyber-resilience. But when it comes to technology, IT professionals typically want a single agent/single console solution so they can unify their cybersecurity efforts and stop manually chasing down trivial threats.

In the context of hybrid-cloud environments, security engineers need a solution that combines an array of next-gen capabilities like automated patch management, application control, memory protection, exploit prevention, behavioral monitoring, tunable machine learning, network sandboxing and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) – all into one centrally managed, easy-to-use solution covering all physical, virtual and cloud endpoints in the organization.

Bitdefender GravityZone supports all virtualization platforms and leverages integrations with infrastructure-management to automate security deployment and administration, ensuring efficient security operations and faster time-to-compliance. GravityZone enables IT departments to minimize security’s impact on CPU, memory and network resources, delivering up to 55% higher virtualization density and 36% faster application performance than competing solutions.