Survey: Security Top Concern for Multicloud Adoption

Most enterprises globally have adopted multicloud strategies, but they face significant challenges in managing the complexities and added requirements of these new application and data delivery infrastructures.

That’s according to a global survey conducted by the Business Performance Innovation (BPI) Network in partnership with A10 Networks. The survey includes responses from 127 participants across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Africa and the Middle East.

The survey finds that improved security – including centralized security and performance management, multicloud visibility of threats and attacks, and security automation – is the No. 1 IT challenge facing companies in these new compute environments.

“Multicloud is the de facto new standard for today’s software- and data-driven enterprise,” said Dave Murray, BPI Network’s head of thought leadership and research. “However, our study makes clear that IT and business leaders are struggling with how to reassert the same levels of management, security, visibility and control that existed in past IT models. Particularly in security, our respondents are currently assessing and mapping the platforms, solutions and policies they will need to realize the benefits and reduce the risks associated [with] their multicloud environments.”

About two-thirds of companies have deployed enterprise applications across two or more public clouds, and 87% expect to increase their reliance on public or private clouds over the next 24 months. Thirty-five percent have moved half or more of their enterprise applications into the cloud.

Just 11% believe their companies have been “extremely successful” in realizing the benefits of multicloud, and improving multicloud security is seen as their most critical challenge, followed by a lack of multicloud talent and expertise, the need for centralized visibility, and the capacity to more effectively manage application and infrastructure complexity, according to the survey.

Some 40% of companies have or will reassess their current relationships with security and load balancer suppliers in light of multicloud, with most others still undecided about whether a change in vendors is needed.

The top-four requirements for improving multicloud security and performance are:

• Centralized visibility and analytics into security and performance (58%).
• Automated tools to speed response times and reduce costs (55%).
• Centralized management from a single point of control (52%).
• Greater security scale and performance to handle increased traffic (36%).

The top four security-specific solution needs are: centralized authentication (63%); centralized security policies (51%); web application firewalls (38%); and distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection (32%).

“The BPI Network survey underscores a critical desire and requirement for companies to reevaluate their security platforms and architectures in light of multicloud proliferation,” said Gunter Reiss, A10’s vice president of worldwide marketing. “The rise of 5G-enabled edge clouds is expected to be another driver for multicloud adoption.”