DEVOPSdigest

Even with the RSA Security Conference in the rear view mirror, security still dominates enterprise discussions. One ongoing discussion is how security professionals lack the necessary tools and processes needed to provide visibility into the cloud, and to converge development, security and operations (DevSecOps) to better identify, investigate and prioritize security and compliance threats for modern applications running in the cloud.

This idea is developed even further in the 2018 Global Security Trends in the Cloud report, a research study conducted by Dimensional Research on behalf of Sumo Logic.

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The findings reveal 93 percent of respondents faced challenges when deploying their current on-premises security tools in the cloud, and 97 percent lacked the tools, cross-functional collaboration and resources to gain proper insight into security across the organization.

These numbers indicate a big problem in DevSecOps that needs to be addressed. With cloud investments comes struggles with changing roles, security budgets, a high volume of security alerts, and stakeholder awareness of security needs. Investing in the cloud should change the way security in the cloud is handled.

Notable key findings include:

Existing Security Tools Not a Fit for Cloud

■ 49 percent of respondents said existing tools aren't effective in the cloud and that an overabundance of tools make it almost impossible to prioritize IT and security investments

■ 45 percent said they couldn't investigate threats in a timely matter because of poor integration capabilities

Security in the Cloud Requires an Organizational Shift

■ 82 percent said with a move to the cloud, it's imperative to investigate threats at the application and infrastructure layers for complete visibility

■ 63 percent reported broader technical expertise is required when trying to understand threats in the cloud

■ 54 percent said greater cross-team coordination is necessary

Despite Current Limitations, Strong Appetite for Change

■ 64 percent of responding security professionals are looking for one single tool to consolidate other tool capabilities

■ 57 percent would benefit from better collaboration between IT and security operations

■ 53 percent want a tool to improve cross-team contextual workflows for threat resolution

A number of respondents called out the need for security and IT operations to work together during threat detection and investigation. In all these cases, the heavy dose of cloud and modern applications made it nearly impossible for the already overburdened security team to resolve the issues independently and in a timely manner. They required real-time assistance in getting data and interpreting it from a variety of teams outside the SOC.

Challenges surface in the survey data as well, with 50 percent of respondents specifically looking for new tools to improve cross-team workflows for threat resolution. This group — as you would expect — had plenty of overlap with the over 50 percent of respondents who observed that on-premises security tools and traditional security information and event management (SIEM) solutions can't effectively assimilate cloud data and threats.These challenges can no longer be solved by siloed tools and processes that are holding organizations back from fully securing their modern IT environments.

Survey Methodology: The 2018 Global Security Trends in the Cloud report, commissioned by Sumo Logic, was conducted in March 2018 and included a total of 316 qualified independent sources of IT security professionals across the U.S. and Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). A range of questions were asked about cloud and on-premises security, including specific tools and organizational challenges, benefits and adoption patterns. All participants were responsible for IT security in environments in both public IaaS and on-premises infrastructure.