A few years ago, the most common question among professionals and management committees was whether to migrate to the cloud. Nowadays things have changed and it would be how to protect what has been distributed among several. Likewise, modern applications are no longer tied to a single infrastructure model; They are composed of microservices and APIs, deployed through automated workflows, and distributed across multiple environments.
But each new cloud, tool or console adds a layer of management: one tool for web applications, another for APIs and another for containers, resulting in inconsistent policies, duplicate alerts and ‘blind spots’. According to data from Imperva Application Security (Thales Cybersecurity), 77% of security professionals point to operational complexity as their biggest challenge in the multi-cloud era.
“Spanish companies are adopting the cloud faster than they simplify their security. The infrastructure may be diverse, but the security strategy should be unified: the same policies and the same visibility, wherever the applications are,” says Eutimio Fernández, Regional Sales Manager for Iberia at Thales Cybersecurity Products.
Between DevOps and Security
For its part, a study by Vanson Bourne concludes that 96% of DevOps professionals and 95% of IT Security professionals agree that modern environments need flexible and valid security for any architecture.
However, while DevOps professionals seek greater speed and scalability, IT security teams focus on control and risk reduction. This ‘wall of confusion’ not only implies a different dynamic, but the problem is exacerbated by the proliferation of tools, fragmented policies and multiple management platforms, generating increased operational burden, inconsistent protection and delivery delays.
“DevOps and Security teams are not asking for less protection, but rather protection that works as applications do today. If security forces us to redesign processes, adoption suffers and risk increases,” continues Fernández.
Three key demands for companies
Thales Cybersecurity Products, whose solutions in Spain have the support of the partners of the distributor Exclusive Networks, thus points out three main demands of companies to be able to protect applications and APIs in hybrid and multi-cloud environments without slowing down innovation:
- Consistent results in any environment: same policies and same visibility in public, private, hybrid and on-premise cloud.
- Security that adapts to how teams work: integration with Kubernetes, Terraform and CI/CD, without redesigning processes.
- Ease of adoption, operation and scale, including contracting through AWS Marketplace and Google Cloud Marketplace.
Integration of security solutions
Thales Cybersecurity offers this flexible and unified application protection – regardless of architecture – with Imperva for Google Cloud and Imperva for AWS. Both solutions inspect traffic within the cloud provider’s own network and are managed from the same console and with the same set of policies as the rest of the environments, with WAF, API security and advanced protection against bots. Exclusive Networks partners are specialized in the integration of these application security solutions in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
Thales Cybersecurity Products looks at how to secure applications and APIs in hybrid and multi-cloud environments without slowing innovation
“It is no longer about choosing between protecting and innovating. With a single platform and console, the customer protects their applications wherever they decide to run them, a more integrated approach that reduces complexity improves collaboration between teams and facilitates secure application delivery at scale,” concludes the head of Thales Cybersecurity Products.
